A large tax hike could appear soon, that would affect Illinois' small businesses still rebounding from the pandemic. One group hopes Congress will act before two bills expire, and the tax increase takes effect.

A small business advocacy group, The National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) says one of them - the 20% Small Business Deduction Act - was created to align small business tax rates with those of larger corporate competitors.

The group's Vice President for Federal Government Relations Jeff Brabant said...

"It's difficult for small businesses to be able to compete with a lot of their larger competitors, and increasing prices isn't always a great option for them," said Brabant. "If you're an employee and you go to a small employer who may not have the money to be able to offer great benefits, versus a large employer who can offer those benefits, it's always going to put the smaller employer at a little bit of a disadvantage."

If Congress decides not to renew the 20% Small Business Deduction Act, Brabant predicted that 90% of America's businesses would face additional barriers to growth and hiring more workers.

According to the U.S. Small Business Administration's 2023 Profile report, Illinois has slightly more than 2 million small business employees - which account for 44% of the state's employees.

The other law up for review by the House is the Main Street Tax Certainty Act, which permits small businesses to deduct up to 20% of their qualified business income and make it a permanent deduction.

Brabant noted that the NFIB strongly supports both measures, which expire on December 31, 2025 - and have bipartisan support.

As the country waits to see the presidential election results, he said he believes the plight of small businesses should be the "number one issue" on Congress's mind.

"It shouldn't be a Republican or Democratic issue," said Brabant. "This should be 'small businesses are the foundation of the economy,' and I don't think anyone wants to see Main Street businesses have a tax hike."

Brabant said the organization is glad both presidential candidates have talked about small businesses, because these discussions don't always occur.

He said NFIB's focus is to educate and increase Congress' awareness, and he said he hopes they will act sooner rather than later.




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The number of Medicare enrollees is projected to rise over the next few years as the baby boomer population ages. More than 2 million Illinoisans are currently enrolled in the federal health care program, according to Healthinsurance.org,

The Office-Based Facility Association, a coalition of practitioners, is calling for a change in what they view as an ineffective and unfair pricing structure of the Medicare Physician Fee schedule.

Jason McKitrick, executive director of the association, said other payers linking themselves to Medicare is one of the issues.

"When you've got ongoing cuts to Medicare, that means you've likely got ancillary cuts going on with the private side, with the Medicaid side, etc.," McKitrick explained. "It's the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, CMS, ultimately, that's the agency and the federal government that sets the rates for the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule."

The association pointed out the current fee schedule addresses doctor's fees only, not the costly and necessary supplies and equipment needed for their practices. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services data, there are 300 office-based services under the fee schedule for which Medicare reimbursement is less than the direct costs, before even considering other costs like overhead and physician work.

Dr. Sreenivas Reddy, a vascular interventional radiologist in Hinsdale, said in addition to seeing patients, he has to monitor overhead expenses such as office space and employee salaries, both affected by inflation. Not having the proper medical equipment and supplies, he added, limits his ability to perform specialized procedures and forces patients to seek care elsewhere.

"That makes these patients go to the hospital-based facilities," Reddy noted. "We have to close our offices and try to join these hospital-based models. They would love to come to the office, get the procedure done in one or two hours, versus it takes like a whole day in the hospital setting."

Reddy emphasized physicians' reimbursement, based on the current physician pay schedule, has been on the downtrend for the last five years. The group has further concerns about a decrease in the number of private practices causing more medical deserts for interventional radiology, cardiology, vascular surgery, radiation and oncology care.

Farm advocates say price gouging on meat and poultry are taking a toll on Montanans.

A farm group cites U.S. Department of Agriculture data as proof of corporate greed, and says companies are still using supply-chain issues as an excuse for inflated prices.

Companies faced massive supply-chain disruptions during the pandemic. But Ag Department data show most of those problems are gone - and food prices in Montana haven't dropped.

Groceries here are 5% higher than the national average and egg prices are up 50% since last year, according to the Consumer Price Index.

Joe Maxwell, chief strategy officer with Farm Action, said food producers are looking for ways to keep prices artificially inflated.

"And it's just a part of their doing business now," said Maxwell. "They find excuses in the markets to gouge that consumer. And one thing we want to be very clear on is that the consumer knows it's not the farmer. The farmer's getting squeezed just as much as is the consumer."

Food producers have blamed the supply chain, but also plant closures and a strain of avian flu for supply and demand issues - driving up production costs.

Farm Action is the same group which, not long after the official end of the pandemic, asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate egg prices - which had tripled in some cases.

Maxwell said Ag Department data show the numbers did not justify the price hike, and adds corporate food producers have positioned themselves to have outsize control over the market.

"They've got that control over the farmer, not unlike oil companies have over oil fields," said Maxwell. "They now have that control because there are very few buyers of farmers' commodities, so they have that control over the farmer, the producer."

Farm Action has also been critical of large, corporate operations that raise thousands of animals in confined spaces, which have been known to pollute air and groundwater.





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A recent wave of racist texts targeting Black Wisconsinites has sparked concerns about data privacy.

The personal information people voluntarily disclose on various online platforms is often used for marketing purposes and can be sold to data brokers, who then sell it to others.

Chad Johnson, assistant professor of computing and new media technologies at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, said industry estimates show most data brokers have no less than 15 data points on every American including age and ethnicity, detailed contact information and even Social Security numbers.

"Since there's no regulation over who can buy those, of course, it could be other advertising agencies, it could be other platforms," Johnson pointed out. "But there's also nothing stopping, for example, a white supremacist movement from buying that information for purposes exactly like this."

Personal data can also be stolen or leaked. Johnson added there is currently no comprehensive federal law to protects data and privacy in the U.S. However, Wisconsin's new data privacy law goes into effect next year.

The Wisconsin Data Privacy Act, passed a year ago today, includes requiring businesses to inform people if their data is being collected and the purpose, as well as the right to access their personal data and request it be corrected or deleted.

Johnson said because anyone can have such detailed information about their targets is where an intimidation factor comes in.

"It kind of sends the message, also implicitly, well what else could they possibly know?" Johnson explained. "If they have my ethnicity, do they have my address, do they have my children's names, do they have my school or my children's school? Do they have my web history, or anything along those lines? It's impossible to know."

He added until people come together to demand better regulation, little can be done to prevent cyberattacks, making individual precautions more important than ever.


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