For small business owners, tax breaks come as a way to help them stay afloat, and in some other circumstances to use that money to invest it in their business.
With Ohio’s legislative leaders appointing a panel to take a serious look into the state’s tax breaks, we wonder whether they will look into the tax breaks granted to special interest groups only, or whether this action will cause the small business owner to be left out.
For more about this and other topics, follow the links below.
Small Business Cybersecurity Insurance Is Vital, House Panel Told
The nascent cybersecurity insurance market can play an important role for smaller businesses, which remain a prime target for hackers and cybercriminals, witnesses and congressmen said at a House Small Business Committee hearing July 26.
Larger corporations have already begun to learn to shift and mitigate cybersecurity risks through insurance, but smaller companies need to get on board, they said. Companies should also follow federal cybersecurity guidance and understand that they must control cybersecurity risks when acting as third-party vendors to larger companies, witnesses said.
Large-scale cyberattacks, such as Petya and WannaCry, made larger companies take note of the need for insurance, witnesses and lawmakers said at the hearing.
There’s no place like home.
That’s the theme of this piece on VentureBeat.com written by Cleveland native Robert Hatta, a partner at Columbus-based VC firm Drive Capital. The headline: “Why Midwesterners leave Silicon Valley and go home for better opportunities.”
He begins with a focus on Travis McCleery, who earlier this year left Netflix, where he led interactive product design, to move back to Columbus to lead product design for Root, an insurance company that uses data collected from drivers’ smartphones to more fairly price and sell auto insurance.
From the piece:
When Root first contacted him, he was skeptical. He left Columbus for a reason, after all. “In Silicon Valley, everyone is trying to invent the future – it’s in the DNA,” he told me “You’re surrounded with all of these brilliant, driven people. It’s hard to resist the call. I just couldn’t find that here in Columbus a few years ago.”
His first questions were about the quality of the team and the size of its ambition, and what he learned convinced him that it was time to return. “Here’s this super-scrappy, talented team trying to completely disrupt the $200 billion auto insurance industry. And they weren’t messing around. They had built an impressive technology platform in a short time.” So he moved his young family back to Columbus.
Editorial: Time to look at those tax breaks
Ohio’s legislative leaders have finally appointed members to a special panel that is supposed to take a critical look at the many state tax breaks granted to special interests. That would be a lot more encouraging if they hadn’t so obviously been avoiding it.
Ohio’s legislative leaders have finally appointed members to a special panel that is supposed to take a critical look at the many state tax breaks granted to special interests. That would be a lot more encouraging if they hadn’t so obviously been avoiding it.
Ohio’s tax credits, deductions and exemptions divert about $9 billion from the treasury every year. Some no doubt serve a worthy purpose, but just as surely many others are unjustified giveaways to powerful interest groups or well-meant ideas that don’t actually work.
