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Paychex surveys small business owners on election-year issues

A new survey taken by Paychex of small business owners looks at how those entrepreneurs are looking at major issues in the presidential election.

And CEO Marty Mucci says not all of the people they surveyed are consistent in what kinds of changes they’d like to see. In terms of tax reform, Mucci says there was a split in what the business owners see as priorities.

“About 53 percent from a tax perspective said closing the tax loopholes that benefit the wealthy would be important to them. But about 47 percent also said reducing the number of individual tax brackets and capping corporate tax at that 15 percent would be important, so kind of a split down the middle on tax reform,” Mucci told WXXI News.

The survey also shows that more than half of the small business owners who were surveyed believe government regulation and complexity is hurting their company’s profitability.

Mucci says many of the small business owners Paychex surveyed are concerned about too much regulation.

“It was very consistent with what we hear on an ongoing basis. Basically the three most important issues to business owners are health care costs, government regulation and complexity, and tax reform. Those are the things that really impact, from an election perspective, certainly impact our small businesses the most.”

In terms of the presidential candidates, the Paychex survey shows that 51 percent of the small business owners surveyed will vote for Donald Trump and 25 percent for Hillary Clinton.

Randy Gorbman is WXXI's director of news and public affairs. Randy manages the day-to-day operations of WXXI News on radio, television, and online.