Wells Fargo/Gallup recently asked a group of small-business owners what their top concerns were, and not surprisingly, health care costs and taxes on small businesses topped the list. The price of energy (including gas), government regulations, federal debt ceiling, availability of credit, federal spending cuts and immigration policies rounded out the list by order of how much each was seen as hurting small business. Both health care costs and taxes on small businesses merit special attention for another reason; more than 50 percent of respondents said they were hurting them a lot. On a related question, owners were asked to rate the reasons why they were not hiring, and 61 percent said the potential cost of health care was putting them off of new hires. Interesting, that was not the top reason; it fell behind not needing additional help (81 percent), worried about revenues and sales (74 percent) and worried about the overall U.S. economy (66 percent).
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