After President Obama’s speech the other night, some friends and I were discussing the comments about not being taxed unless you make more than $250,000 a year. We made jokes about only wanting to make $249,000. That would ensure we would stay under the radar. It is all pretty funny until you think about this.

Sixty-four percent of the businesses, companies, corporations, partnerships … whatever you want to call them… that actually hire people in this country are categorized as small businesses. These are businesses that report their incomes on personal tax returns. Personal tax returns … not corporate returns. It’s easy to see that a small business owner that sells a product or service and employees a few people can easily have pass the $250,000 threshold.  So, are you following the numbers here? Sixty-four percent of job providers are small businesses and they employ well over 70% of all people with jobs. What’s more these small businesses are creating 80% of all of our economy’s new jobs. These small business owners are the very targets of Obama’s tax increases.

So, when these business owners experience a reduction in their income as a result of these tax increases they are going to look for a way to cut their expenses. One of the ways many businesses will cut expenses is to cut jobs. Fire people.

But who to fire? Longevity counts, so does job performance. How about the people that come in late to work frequently, maybe you look at the employees with tattoos or piercings. But let’s say it comes down to tiebreaker time. All elements are equal – but someone has to go. Now is the time to teach your employees that actions have consequences. If one of your employees on the bubble voted for Obama, that should make your decision for you. Tell him or her that they made a choice to vote for someone who made it clear that your taxes were going to go up. You’re not going to take the hit. It was their decision, not yours, and they take the hit. Maybe you can go get a worthy, honorable poor person to hire you.