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But they expressed concerns that additional support may be needed for businesses that have been around for a few years.
Harris rolled out part of her plan to create what she calls an “opportunity economy” earlier this week, calling to expand the startup expense deduction from $5,000 to $50,000.
“Part of my plan is to give startup small businesses a $50,000 tax deduction to start up their small business,” Harris said during an event with Oprah Winfrey in Farmington Hills on Thursday. “Right now, it’s $5,000. Nobody can start a small business with $5,000.”
“That’s a teeny, tiny business,” Winfrey said.
“It’s a concept of a business,” Harris joked, referring to former President Donald Trump answering during the Sept. 10 presidential debate that he has “concepts of a plan” to replace the Affordable Care Act if repealed.
Dwayne Williams Jr., the founder and president of VSpec 360, a company that helps first responders in active shooter situations by creating renderings of buildings that contain key information like lockbox codes, breaker information, which way doors swing open and a beta test allowing them to tap into security camera feeds, said that the existing tax credit would cover only a fraction of his costs to start the business.
“You said that the initial [deduction] was $5,000. What I can say for me, because I’m in tech, the camera alone, we’re not talking about website or anything else, the camera alone starts at $6,000,” Williams said. “So, just that alone, we didn’t cover anything as far as my actual expenses.”
“To have that number expanded up to $50,000 and to be able to get that back, yeah, it would take a little bit of time, but, overall, to be able to have it come back, and then have it be able to help those expenses in the long run, it would do amazing things for us,” Williams said. “Because now we have more capital that we can actually reinvest back into ourselves.”
State Sen. Kristen McDonald Rivet (D-Bay City) said she was motivated to run for office in part because of her experience running a small business providing childcare during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I know that access to capital is something that people talk about in rooms and then it never actually flows into communities,” McDonald Rivet said. “The idea of doing it in this way has the ability to scale. I have seen so many projects get right things that could be transformational, businesses coming and transforming downtowns and neighborhoods, and then they just get to a space and everything dies because the capital stuff.”
McDonald Rivet is seeking the open 8th Congressional District seat against for Trump immigration official Paul Junge.
Booker said that “so many” small business owners “know how to hustle, know how to get it done, and just find a hard time getting a start. And that starting phase is actually when most small businesses fail, and they fail because of lack of capital.”
Harris’ plan also would aim to cut red tape for small businesses by creating a standard deduction in the tax code, like the one available to individual filers, and by working to expand speed implementation of multistate licensing agreements and recognitions.
“Red tape is annoying, yes, but incredibly expensive to navigate,” McDonald Rivet said.
Harris would set a goal of 25 million applications to launch new small businesses during her first term in office, exceeding the record 19 million applications that have been filed under President Joe Biden’s administration.
But Dwayne Clemons, who teaches dance classes for Classy Move Productions as well as DJing various events, said that additional support is needed for businesses who are already operational.
“As businesses are in their first five to 10 years, there’s growing pains,” Clemons said. “My business is really equipment oriented, and every time I make an equipment purchase, I’m talking about thousands of dollars to make a purchase. If I can’t access capital for my business, now I’ve got to use my personal credit to do it, and we know that business credit and personal credit are not treated the same, so my FICO score is going to drop just because I use my credit card, but I’m doing it for a business purchase.”
Former President Donald Trump became the first major party nominee for president or vice president to visit Flint this year on Tuesday, making his first public appearance since an apparent second assassination attempt for a town hall moderated by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Trump has proposed imposing a 10 to 20% tariff on all foreign goods and a 60 percent tariff on goods from China.
Sonyita Clemons, who coaches businesses and individuals through Total Life Prosperity Community Development Corporation, said that would likely lead to increases in the cost of doing business being passed off on consumers.
“If all of your other costs go up, you don’t have a choice,” Clemons said. “You have to pass those costs along.”
Clemons pointed to credit card fees as an example of businesses passing rising operational costs onto consumers.
“As a business owner, if you take that cost on, then that means you’re directly affecting your profit margins,” Clemons said. “And the profit margins are not just because you want to make a lot of money, but that’s what you feed your family on.”
McDonald Rivet said it would be difficult for both the businesses and the customers.
“We also have to understand that running a small business on, often, margins of 4% and 5%, this is, you know, my mom used to call it by the skin of your teeth, right, being able to make these businesses run,” McDonald Rivet said.
McDonald Rivet said that 60% of jobs in Michigan pay less than $50,000 a year, adding that “a proposal that would add additional costs on top of that, of virtually everything in our economy, is so misguided and a complete lack of understanding of what reality is for the people in our communities.”
Booker also joined Harris campaign volunteers in Saginaw for a phonebanking event before campaigning in Oakland County with U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Holly), who’s running against former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-White Lake) for the open U.S. Senate seat.
Booker said the last time he was in Flint was in March 2020, when he endorsed Biden to be the Democratic nominee for president after ending his own campaign.
“I am a young man that loves this city,” Booker said. “I’ve always felt this kinship with Flint because I was the mayor of Newark, N.J., which was another city that had seen rough times but was standing up and affirming defiantly who we really are.”
While Trump beat Harris to visiting the city in the 2024 election cycle, he did not mention the city’s water crisis a single time.
Booker said that Harris is responsible for “the biggest resources for getting lead pipes out of the ground ever invested,” calling it “a pet project for the two of us.”
“Everybody talks about it being a Flint crisis. When Flint was having the crisis, there were over 3,000 jurisdictions in America where children had more than twice the blood lead levels. This is a national problem,” Booker said. “And so, instead of letting polluters and others get away with things, the Harris-Walz team is really about environmental justice, and Flint, in many ways, through their pain, created a national sense of purpose.”
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This article was originally published on Michigan Advance and republished here, with permission, under a Creative Commons License.
