One-Stop-Shop
As a business consultant to small and mid-market companies and as an entrepreneur, I know how hard it is to get your fledgling business up and running. You start with an idea and then you identify a market, draft a business plan, apply for a bank loan, open your doors, build your customer base, and hopefully, some day make a decent enough profit that you get to go home at night and see your kids.
The last thing you need is for the government to make it harder for you to figure out how comply with the law. Currently, if you want to start a business legally, you have to do some or all of the following:
- File articles of incorporation or organization with the Colorado Secretary of State.
- Obtain a Federal Employer Identification Number from the IRS. (In the application process, you'll have to reply to a bunch of questions that you probably don't have the answer to.)
- Obtain a state sales tax license. (Again with the questions you don't know how to answer.)
- Obtain a withholding tax license. (Ditto.)
- Obtain a local business license (or several of them).
- Obtain a local sales tax license (or several of them).
- File monthly, quarterly, or annual withholding tax returns.
- File monthly, quarterly, or annual sales tax returns. (Or not. You may fit within one of the very-difficult-to-decipher exemptions. But if you first apply to the state for a license and then discover that you don't need one, the state will keep sending you notices of taxes due. This will happen even if the state agrees with you that you don't need a license.)
- Pay unemployment insurance.
- Pay personal property taxes. (You may even have to keep separate books just for this purpose. Many businesses do.)
- Pay real property taxes.
- Comply with myriad industry-specific regulations.
- If you do business in any other state in addition to Colorado, you may also have to do all of the above for those states.
- And we haven't even mentioned the federal requirements that may apply to your business.
Were you able even to read all of that? I'm a lawyer, and I find it confusing. What's worse, you have to deal with several different bureaucracies that will give you inconsistent answers and varying levels of service.
How about we streamline the whole starting-a-business process?
I propose that we create one website with the entrepreneur's perspective in mind. Let's create a "one-stop-shop" where everything you need to know to start your business can be read, filed, complied with, and completed with certainty and efficiency.
Think how much more likely you would be to start a new business if you knew legal compliance were that easy. And just imagine how much more attractive Colorado would be for potential employers.
At the Capitol, I will fight to make starting and running a small business much easier and less burdensome, which will add jobs and spur our economic recovery.