To paraphrase you, if someone thinks that hiring and firing is always an absolute clear cut decision........ he's a moron....... but, no surprise there.

It might come as a surprise to you but I have personally run across employers who have what I would call "luxury employees". They are there to take up the slack. My wife used to work as a "mobile unit" nurse. She was trained in all departments of the hospital. They would plug her in and out of units that were understaffed at the moment. Why? One of the reasons is that they don't have to have as many nurses per unit to take care of unexpected shortages or higher than average census. Their regular nurses were inflexible so if they had lower census in ICU they could not send them to the Ortho dept. Instead of hiring more nurses to make sure they are adequately staffed, they formed this unit to cover.

__________________
01 Ford Excursion Powerstroke
99 E300 Turbodiesel
91 Vette with 383 motor
05 Polaris Sportsman 800 EFI
06 Polaris Sportsman 500 EFI
03 SeaDoo GTX SC Red
03 SeaDoo GTX SC Yellow
04 Tailgator 21 ft Toy Hauler
11 Harley Davidson 883 SuperLow

Paraphrase away..........but, it's hardly what I said.

OT, yet again.

We were speaking about a small business owner not your wife in a hospital.

If, in the next few years after the country has worked itself out of this Republican induced financial disaster, your business increases and you prosper, will you give a raise to those same people with Obama stickers on their cars?

What is it you MEANT to say then? Please break it into small words since I obviously am misunderstanding. You said "If the owner is basing his hiring decisions on how much aftertax money he posseses....". What should I interpret from it? The way I see it, you think it is clear cut. Either you base your hiring on how much aftertax money or you don't. I am saying that you are correct that such person is a moron if that is ALL he bases the decision on. Are you saying that the aftertax money will never enter the picture AS A FACTOR, not the "dealbreaker"? Note, I agree with you that it probably will not be the dealbreaker. What I am saying is that you feel it is NOT going to be a factor and I am saying that it could be a FACTOR.

How so?

It is an example of how the hospital trims it's staff and still can not get itself into problems. Of course, unless you believe this move the hospital made and the fact that they lost a major contract and had a hiring freeze is purely coincidence. How does it apply to a small business? Like I said, what if I decided that instead of hiring someone else to replace this guy I am firing or quit, I decide to spread the load to others and myself so I can take home a few bucks more?

__________________
01 Ford Excursion Powerstroke
99 E300 Turbodiesel
91 Vette with 383 motor
05 Polaris Sportsman 800 EFI
06 Polaris Sportsman 500 EFI
03 SeaDoo GTX SC Red
03 SeaDoo GTX SC Yellow
04 Tailgator 21 ft Toy Hauler
11 Harley Davidson 883 SuperLow

With regard to a small business, we've got to determine where the salary for the new employee will come from. In an S corp., it must come from the pretax income of the owner. So, yes, in this scenario, the owner must have sufficient income to pay for the cost of that employee. However, since all of our discussions have be regarding taxable income of above $250K and the additional tax paid under the new plan is roughly $7.5K for a $400K income, I don't see how you can make any case that the owner will need to defer hiring due to the loss of $7.5K of income.

In fact, for those near the $250K line, you might even make the case that the small business owner will have an incentive to hire because it will drop his marginal rate from 39.5% to 36%. It's quite possible for the opposite effect to occur.

I don't see how it could possibly be a negative factor in the income brackets we're discussing ($250K and above).