News Item

Roanoke Small Businesses Call for Repeal of the Health Insurance Tax


According to small business owners who met last Wednesday morning at the Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce, the Health Insurance Tax (HIT) is set to take valuable resources and inhibit their ability to create jobs. At the event representatives from the Chamber, including the Small Business Development Center. and local small business owners discussed the impact of the tax, hoping to urge lawmakers to repeal it before it takes effect next year. On paper, the healthcare reform law calls it a tax on insurers, but the HIT is really a pass-through tax on small business, said Meredith Beatrice who works with HIT’s public affairs outreach.


“You can agree with every other provision in the PPACA [healthcare reform law], but still take issue with levying an unfair tax on small business owners, ” said Brian Plum, executive vice president and chief financial officer at Blue Ridge Bank.

According to the Stop The HIT Coalition, the bipartisan group supporting a repeal of this tax and co-hosting the event, the HIT will cost small business owners, the self-employed and their employees $87 billion dollars within its first ten years and $208 billion in its second ten years. This could be especially harmful for communities like Roanoke where small business is an integral part of local commerce.

“The HIT creates a big challenge for our business. We’re going to have to accept and react to the hand we’re dealt,” said Billy Newcomb with JNE, INC, parent company and owner of 23 Burger King Restaurants in and around the Roanoke/Blacksburg area.

Legislation to repeal the Health Insurance Tax in the U.S. House, H.R. 1370, introduced by Reps. Charles Boustany (R-LA7) and Dan Boren (D-OK2), recently hit a landmark 226 bipartisan co-sponsors, including seven of Virginia’s own representatives. Companion legislation has also been introduced in the Senate, S. 1880: “Jobs Premium and Protection Act.” However, despite this momentum, repeal advocates say more support is needed as the HIT is slated to cost nearly 250,000 jobs and $30 billion in lost sales by 2021 if it is not repealed by 2014, according to the NFIB Research Foundation.

To learn more about the movement to repeal the Health Insurance Tax, visit the Stop The HIT Coalition’s web page at www.stopthehit.com.