Right wing pro-unAmerican Corporate America supporters are spouting off that raising taxes on the elites will hurt small business owners.

Fact: The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s own data (August 2011 technical paper titled Methodology to Identify Small Businesses and their Owners) shows that increasing taxes on the filthy rich will affect only 2.5% of small businesses!

Fact: According to the Small Business Administration, the reason is that about 21 million small businesses are “mom & pop” operations, meaning they have little to no employees (they are operated by the owners themselves), and the average yearly revenue is only $45,000!

Something else, the SBA says the overwhelming majority of U.S. businesses are “small businesses”, employing more than half the U.S. work force.  However, the SBA also points out that the survival rate is not good, with only 25% lasting 15 years or more.  Interestingly the SBA says the survival rate for the big corporations is almost the same!

What this tells me is that tax breaks for businesses, or the filthy rich, are not helping businesses to survive long term (20 years is long term).