Profit Survey...Job Creation The Boss's Pay...R&D Work
THERE'S NO SHORTAGE of surveys that regularly ask small-business owners everything from their opinions of the government to the state of their inventories. A recently released poll comes from the Small Business Service Bureau Inc., which calls itself a "hybrid" organization. Based in Worcester, Mass., with a national membership of 35,000, it sells consulting and other services to small companies but also lobbies and conducts surveys.</br></br>Its latest report is upbeat. Of about 1,600 companies responding to a survey in the first quarter this year, about 29% reported an increase in earnings from the year before. That compares favorably with 17% reporting a profit rise a year earlier and only 5.5% the year before that.</br></br>The other side is that fewer businesses reported earnings declines this year. About 38% reported a profit drop in the first quarter this year, compared with 49% in 1983.</br></br>In each of the past four years, taxes have been at the top of the list of the owners' worst problems. However, payroll taxes have been the No. 1 problem the past two years, having pushed business-income taxes down to No. 2. Unemployment compensation levies have been listed as the third most-troubling tax mentioned in all four years.</br></br>---