We talk a lot about health care reform as a whole, but legislative activity has zeroed in on small businesses. Not only have small business owners been seen as a potential source of revenue, but yet a group of individuals in need of help.

Obviously small business owners could use a helping hand. Considering most small business owners face staggering start-up costs, including construction, rent, advertising, employee costs, and so on. Typically the last thing on the list is their personal health care or employee benefits for that matter.

Of course, health care legislation is the big issue that will affect small businesses. This issue alone begins to create many worries among small business owners, such as how they will pay for health care, and how they will be taxed on it in the future.

In reading an article from the WebCPA, Cindy Hockenberry, tax information analyst at the National Association of Tax Professionals, sees both potential positive and negative impacts from proposed legislation. While noting some positives, she did state that, "health care legislation might hurt small businesses, especially for employers that can't afford to provide health care to their employees".

The cash for clunkers program is ending on Monday. Do you think it accomplished everything it was supposed to? I think it did in many ways and in others, it failed miserably.

The program did help stimulate new car sales. This was pretty obvious when the program ran out of funds shortly after the start. Let’s see, $1 billion divided by $4500 (per allowance) equals about 223,000 "clunker" car trade-ins. That is a big boost to the car industry! And then don’t forget the additional $2 billion that was added to the program. That would boost the new car sales to about 670,000!

To keep up with the new car demand, some laid-off car-manufacturing employees were called back to work. Another good point to the program. But, I am not sure if this will be a temporary call back or permanent (a possible fail on the flip side).

Can you believe 670,000 gas hog (cars that got 18 MPG or less and were not older than a 1984 model) cars were removed from the roads. You could trade for a new car that had a MPG rating better than your "clunker". If the mileage was better by 4 MPG you qualified for a $3500 credit or if the new car got 10 MPG better than your "clunker", you would qualify for the $4500 credit. The "clunkers" needed to be in driveable condition, a clear title, owned by the new car buyer (and insured) for at least one year prior to the trade.

This is where I start to waiver on if this was such a good idea or not. Here are a few of my negative thoughts, or should I say concerns, on the "Cash for Clunkers" program.

• Will the buyers really able to afford the new car payments if they were driving a "clunker"?
• Did it make people go in debt when they really couldn’t afford any more?
• How many dealers will properly dispose of the "clunkers"?
• Will the dealers actually get the promised money from the government?
• Why couldn’t this program have paid maybe $2000 for non-working junk cars instead? Wouldn’t that have cleaned up a lot of dead car messes?
• Some of the cars being classified as "clunkers" looked pretty good to me!

I am just in awe of how we can come up with money to purchase "clunker cars" but we can’t seem to find a fix for "clunkers" in our Health Care system. Couldn’t that $3 billion have been better spent on providing some help to those that need health insurance? I know it wouldn’t go far but wouldn’t it have been a start?

August is here. Where does the time go? Fall is just around the corner, then it’s the Holidays, then the whole year is done and we start wondering what makes the new year go so fast.

This summer has been so odd here in Iowa. This has been one of the coldest Julys in history. There were no days with a temperature above 90 degrees. Seems like September instead of July. I have heard a lot of questions on "do you think we’ll have a hot fall?" or "do you think the winter will be really cold?" Which does make you wonder, what will happen next? Personally I think we’ll stay in the cooler weather mode.

What happens at BASE® this time of year? Let’s just say BUSY, BUSY, BUSY! This is the time of year that BASE® employees are gearing up for the upcoming 09-10 busy season. Saying 10 just seems odd – guess I’ll have to use 2010 for a while, probably until 2011!

Re-election of Benefits for 2010 will begin in September and run through December 31, 2009. This is the process where our clients have an opportunity to change their benefits for the upcoming year. We have quite a bit of preparation to this process including getting mailings, emails and some additional phone training completed.

We also start to remind clients of the year-end expense report they need to complete. Adjudication of their expenses is required by law to be done by a Third Party Administrator (BASE®). We have mailings, emails and some refresher training for our Benefit Specialists to get them prepared to provide the best service to our clients as possible.

Our Group products department also gets very busy this time of year. Many clients try to have their HRA+ or Cafeteria plans coincide with their insurance renewal. This means handling all the new clients plus providing the best service possible to our existing clients. And Health Care Premium Reimbursement (HCPR) is proving to be a great addition to our Cafeteria plan.

If you would like to learn more about BASE® and our excellent staff, contact us today!