Nina Olsen, in case you didn’t know, is the National Taxpayer Advocate. A few years ago, when she named the tax gap as the top taxpayer challenge for fiscal 2004 and simultaneously nailed Schedule C filers as an entire class of tax cheats, she seemed like Microbusiness Public Enemy #1.

This year, she is letting everybody know that those new 1099 reporting requirements are absurd. So, now, it’s more like We Love Nina, right?

Besides taxes, there’s more political gyrations around what Congress can and should be and will do for small businesses and whether, as usual, all of that will turn out to be useless for microbusinesses.

There’s new numbers out this week, as well, and another edition of Policy Matters.

For more information:

• FY2010 National Taxpayer Advocate Report To Congress (PDF)
• Senators Reid, Landrieu Join SBA Administrator Mills To Discuss Support for Small Business
• U.S. Census Bureau: Survey of Business Owners
• Microbusiness Conversations

Take this debacle with the nomination of Dr. Winslow Sargeant. Personally, given that it is not required by statute for the Chief Counsel of the SBA Office of Advocacy to be a lawyer, Senator Olympia Snowe’s intransigence about it strikes me as being a bit unreasonable … even irrational.

-ahem-

Do you really have to be a lawyer in order to go to bat for small businesses that are regularly browbeaten by federal regulations? I wouldn’t have thought so, not when there are attorneys on staff at Advocacy and when the real experts on the subject are small business owners on those Advocacy panels I keep hearing about.

On the Senate floor, Senator Mary Landrieu mentioned that when the economy is in the sort of shambles it’s in right now, this is not the time to withhold any sort of resource for small businesses — including their very own advocate within the federal government.

She’s right. And, just between us, I sure hope they get this resolved soon!

So, in other news … anybody taking bets on whether the federal budget will get cobbled together, passed by both the House and the Senate, and all 12 bills signed into law before the close of the fiscal year on September 30th?

Nah, I didn’t think so.

For more information:

• Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship
• Status of Fiscal 2011 Appropriations Bills (THOMAS)
• SBA Office of Advocacy

Are you excited?

Last week, President Obama signed the relevant proclamation, which proclaimed, in part:

In this year’s State of the Union address, I proposed creating a $30 billion lending fund to help increase the flow of credit to small businesses, and I call on the Congress to pass this legislation quickly. My Administration is also working to extend and enhance Small Business Administration programs that have helped small business owners acquire loans and hire workers.

This week, we celebrate the role of entrepreneurs and small businesses in our national life. They are the engine of our prosperity and a proud reflection of our character. A healthy small business sector will give us vibrant communities, cutting-edge technology, and an American economy that can compete and win in the 21st century.

Because never let it be said that a president lost an opportunity to pat himself on the back — presumably because nobody else ever wants to do it, right?

So, this week’s news includes the latest effort to spur small business lending (likely to be fairly useless for most microbusinesses) and the latest dynamic jobs data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, showing that small businesses — including microbusiness employers — really were creating jobs during the third quarter of 2009, just like everybody said they wanted them to.

All this and another Policy Matters column, too.

For more information:

• House Committee on Financial Services
• Bureau of Labor Statistics

If you’re wondering if I may have filled the bong a little too early this morning, that greeting will make sense to you after you hear this week’s Policy Matters column.

As for the news, it’s always interesting to me when Congress slaps a “small business” label on some piece of legislation that is useless for nine out of ten small businesses in the country. When giant agri-business corporations do that, they get in trouble with people yelling things like “truth in labeling!”

There is no truth in labeling in either politics or public policy. It’s very sad.

We have a summary of economic data, with the promise of an update in the near future. And Microloan Intermediaries and Women’s Business Centers are having a tough time with funding but, fortunately for them, Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) has donned her red cape and S tee shirt, and leaps to the rescue.

That’s quite an image, actually, but of course that’s all metaphorically speaking.

For more information:

• House Committee on Ways and Means
• Bureau of Labor Statistics
• National Federation of Independent Business
• The Conference Board
• Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship

There are a few issues, not really very many. There’s taxes and regulations and federal procurement and technology-related stuff and access to capital.

These issues never actually go away. The just get recycled every year.

Lawmakers never seem able to solve them or even to make a significant dent in solving them. Well, no, I take that back. President Bush and former Advocacy Chief Counsel made a healthy dent in Regulatory Flexibility Act enforcement with Executive Order 13272.

Except, of course, that whenever Congress makes widespread changes to the RFA or to the federal regulatory landscape, that makes another round of RFA compliance training that Advocacy will have to do.

The other problems just seem intransigent, and none moreso than small businesses and federal procurement. It issue and its component parts never change and Congress seems wholly incapable of coming up with effective solutions to those problems.

Federal procurement is on the docket today, along with a follow-up on the nomination of Dr. Winslow Sargeant for Advocacy Chief Counsel and research on retirement savings behavior among small business owners and employees.

And, as always, my weekly Policy Matters column, in which I contemplate the symptoms of insanity sometimes displayed by members of Congress.

For more information:

• House Committee on Small Business
• Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship
• SBA Office of Advocacy

It brings to an end one of the ugliest political fights I’ve seen since the Civil Rights Movement. I think the New York Times’ Paul Krugman describes it well:

“[T]he emotional core of opposition to reform was blatant fear-mongering, unconstrained either by the facts or by any sense of decency.”

I want to say that, whatever your opinion of reform might be, I’d hope you can see the justice of that remark but I sincerely doubt that any of those Tea Party types would agree. Then again, judging them by their behavior at that protest last weekend, they seem to be a pack of closet Klansmen anyway.

But I digress.

Also in this week’s microbusiness news, we have patent reform redux — a new and improved reform proposal that is eerily similar to one I was writing about three years ago. And the House Small Business Committee takes a look at business incubators and job growth.

For more information:

• National Association for the Self-Employed
• House Committee on Small Business
• Press Release: Leahy, et al Unveil Details Of Patent Reform Agreement
• Small Business Patent Data Collection Act (THOMAS)

Consider yourself forewarned.

About this week’s lead article, I’m also expecting to have a bit of followup that I can post about Congressman Mike Michaud (D-ME) and his crusade to get more funding for the SBA Microloan program. This was information that I had tried to get on Friday but didn’t hear from the relevant staffer until this morning. So, I’ll let you know what I find out.

Also in this week’s podcast, Plain Language might come to the federal government after all, and we’ll try one more time to improve the Regulatory Flexibility Act and strengthen the SBA Office of Advocacy.

And, as always, this week’s Policy Matters column.

For more information:

• House Committee on Small Business
• Center for Plain Language
• Sunshine Week
• National Small Business Association
• SBA Office of Advocacy

If you’re not one of those folks … suffice it to say that I was uncharacteristically silent.

Not taking the week off, just not posting much of anything anywhere because it pretty well didn’t have time to turn around twice, thanks to child health issues.

Now that all is well once again, I can return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

This tax reform proposal from Senators Wyden (D-OR) and Gregg (R-NH) is far from perfect but it is still very promising. And, in an election year with a decidedly un-sexy issue like this, hammering out this sort of bipartisan legislation is an act of courage. Kudos to both for this one; I hope it ends up having some legs.

Also this week, the return of the infamous Women’s Procurement Program and new research from Advocacy. And, as always, this week’s Policy Matters column.

For more information:

• The Bipartisan Tax Fairness and Simplification Act of 2010 (Information page on Senator Wyden’s web site)
• SBA Announcement: Women’s Procurement Program
• Regulations.gov
• SBA Office of Advocacy

It’s pretty typical of the questions I get asked by microbusiness owners, too: why is the government so quick to rescue the big boys but not us little guys down here.

The way the feds throw resources at already-resource-rich parts of the economy while leaving the rest of us to struggle on our own is what you might call the ultimate uneven playing field.

Then again, when you stop and think about things like that passel of idiot regulatory proposals targeting independent contractors and the firms, you start wondering if maybe it’s a good thing to be ignored by the federal government.

For more information:

• Friedman Associates
• Association for Enterprise Opportunity
• Independent Contractors [Survey] from the NASE Staff Blog
• SBA Office of Advocacy

Never doubt my devotion to microbusinesses!

Of course, in my opinion, the best news of the week is the research. I’m so excited, I can hardly sit still (which makes it very difficult to type, let me tell you). For the most part, the paper merely demonstrates the places where further research is needed but that’s great.

You see, with this paper, we get to hear from microbusiness owners and they tell us that a lot of what people assume to be true about them isn’t. If further research explores just what is here that needs further clarification, description, documentation and whatnot, there’ll be an avalanche of microbusiness research where before there was almost none.

That’s really exciting!

This week, we have more on the President’s small business proposals and whether they’ll matter to micros. There’s also more on the President’s budget. And, as always, this week’s Policy Matters.

For more information:

• The White House (Official Web Site)
• Microbusiness Research Institute
• Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship
• House Small Business Committee