Small businesses generate employment, innovation, and economic prosperity everywhere. They drive economic growth while allowing Americans, especially women, to pursue their dreams and build fulfilling, rewarding, and prosperous lives.
As women who have owned and worked for small businesses, we can attest that America’s economic engine is our 35 million small businesses, of which about one-third are owned by women. In fact, 99.9 percent of all U.S. companies are considered small businesses.
As we wrap up National Small Business Week, celebrated May 4th through 10th, we are reminded of the impact of entrepreneursand the threats to their livelihoods if the Trump tax cuts expire. (RELATED: BAY BUCHANAN: The Six Point Plan To Save America’s Small Business)
North Dakota has 75,265 small businesses, representing 98.8 percent of the state’s businesses and employing over half of the workforce. And in Michigan, 911,914 small businesses account for 99.6 percent of businesses and employ 1.9 million workers.
Of the millions of small businesses in the country, women-owned small businesses are thriving. The nation’s 12 million female-owned businesses generate $2.1 trillion for the U.S. economy. Women-owned businesses employ 11 million workers across the nation. In both of our states, women-owned businesses outpace the national average of 40 percent. Between 2019 and 2023, female businesses grew 14 percent, adding 1.4 million jobs. This doubles the growth rate of male-owned small businesses.
What’s helped fuel that growth? The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), passed in 2017, gave small businesses the breathing room to reinvest, expand, and hire. It slashed tax rates for families and job creators, ushered in the lowest unemployment in 50 years, and drove median household income to a record high of $68,703 by 2019. Within two years of its passage, U.S. businesses added 4.7 million jobs, and thousands offered bonuses and benefits to their employees.
These aren’t abstract numbers—they are real results. Who doesn’t support that?
Lana Pol, who owns a trucking company, used her tax savings to purchase new trucks, expand to a 40,000-square-foot warehouse, and give raises to her drivers. Jolene Riessen, a farmer in Iowa, invested in new harvesting equipment that helped her business thrive. “The tax cuts gave us room to breathe,” she said.
Unfortunately, record-high inflation caused by the Biden administration has worsened the small business environment since the passage of the TCJA, reinforcing the need for the tax cuts to be extended. “We’re barely breaking even, and we’re not alone,” Reissen noted to IW Features about the high equipment, seed, and fertilizer prices. “If these tax cuts go away, it will be even harder for small farms to compete.”
This is the prospect that Reissen, Pol, and 26 million small businesses face as their top tax rates could spike to 43.4 percent at the end of this year if the tax cuts expire.
These stories and more are why House Republicans are working with President Trump to make the tax cuts permanent for individuals and small businesses. In fact, a stunning 78 percent of women polled recently said Congress should extend the tax cuts to prevent individual taxes from rising.
The TCJA has impacted every American. Organizations like the Independent Women’s Forum help us highlight stories like these. And it’s an honor to work together with Members of Congress to shed light on the amazing women-owned small businesses at the cutting edge of America’s future.
Their work highlights the very real, very personal impact of tax policy on women entrepreneurs across the country. Let’s be clear: allowing these tax cuts to expire would stall the progress we’ve made.
We must make the tax cuts permanent to provide small businesses with much-needed economic certainty. This will motivate businesses to hire, expand, and invest, further advancing women-owned small businesses’ success.
Women-led businesses are helping steer our economy forward. With the right policies in place, there’s no limit to how far they can go. We cannot allow our nation’s economic engine to stall.
House GOP Conference Chairwoman Lisa McClain represents Michigan’s 9th Congressional District; Congresswoman Julie Fedorchak represents North Dakota’s At-Large District; and Patrice Onwuka is Director of the Center for Economic Opportunity at Independent Women.
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