Know the Facts, Be Heard in the Midst of a Challenging Environment

CompTIA started out the month of November with a bang, hosting our Washington, D.C. Fly-In.  With more than 50 advocacy visits made by more than 30 CompTIA members and partners, we certainly delivered to Capitol Hill an important message – that the interests of small and medium sized IT firms must be addressed.

As we near the end of November, however, the interests of small IT businesses will have to be seen within a broader context.  At this writing, it appears that the “Super Committee” charged with reaching agreement on deficit reduction will have failed, thus triggering $1.2 trillion in budget cuts beginning in FY2013.  The inability to reach consensus raises significant questions with regard to other budgetary “hot button” issues such as whether the suspension of payroll taxes should be extended, what should happen when the so-called Bush tax cuts expire, and more.  The resolution of such matters could have important implications for your businesses.  In such a challenging environment, it will take all of us to keep pressing the interests of the tech SMB.

If the Fly-In showed us anything, it is that educating lawmakers is imperative.  The key to doing so effectively is making sure that we ourselves are educated about our industry, the role our industry plays in the economy and what we should focus on with law makers.   We recommend to you a few tools that you might find helpful in this regard.

1. As part of our TechVoice partnership, we recently completed a new study of small and medium-sized IT and tech-intense companies with respect to tax policy. An overwhelming majority of respondents noted that tax compliance is especially challenging for small and medium-sized businesses because they do not have the resources or scale to comply with complicated tax laws.


2. Following the release of the study, we made a webinar presentation that linked the results of the study to some policy prescriptions.  The webinar recording and slides are available for your review.


3. We recently published a white paper that provides useful information about the definition and importance of small business IT.   The paper, entitled “Information Technology: Generating Growth & Jobs for the U.S. Economy” spells out the composition of the global IT industry and the contribution small IT firms makes to the overall health and wellbeing of that industry.

With the facts at your fingertips, you can be an advocate for the industry.  This is how we keep the attention of law makers about what our industry needs.