Loading

Grow Smart Business


teaserInfographic
Close

Search Articles

Most liked posts



Recent Articles

Popular Tags

accounting and taxes blogging blogs Branding Business Development business travel Capital Access Compliance Customer Service ecommerce Email marketing entrepreneur entrepreneurship Facebook Generational Marketing GrowSmartBiz Conference Grow Smart Business lead generation LinkedIn Marketing michael dougherty mobile marketing networking online marketing Raising Capital Resources retail sales sales process SBSI Search Marketing seo small business small business accounting small business hiring small business loans small business marketing small business resources small business technology Small Business Trends social media Technology Twitter Web Design Workforce

Categories

«
»


The Best (and Worst) States for Small Business

May 24th, 2012 ::

By Maria Valdez Haubrich

Are you considering moving or expanding your business? Then you might want to get out your ten-gallon hat. A recent survey to uncover the most small-business-friendly states, conducted by Thumbtack and The Kauffman Foundation, found Texas and Idaho ranked highest overall.

The 2012 Thumbtack Small Business Survey polled 6,000 small business owners nationwide about conditions in their states including:

  • Ease of starting a business
  • Hiring costs
  • Regulations
  • Training and networking programs available
  • The region’s current economic health

You might be surprised to find that taxes weren’t the only—or even the most important—factor small business owners cared about. Easy-to-understand licensing regulations and helpful training programs were also seen as critical in creating a small-business-friendly environment. In fact, Small businesses said licensing requirements were nearly twice as important as tax-related regulations in determining their state or city government’s overall business-friendliness.

Here are some of the findings:

  • Texas had three of the top five cities (Dallas, San Antonio and Austin), while California was home to the bottom three (Los Angeles, San Diego and Sacramento).
  • Colorado Springs and Washington, DC, had the nation’s healthiest small businesses.
  • Idaho, Nevada and Delaware had the most small business-friendly tax codes; California and New Mexico had the least-friendly tax codes.
  • Nebraska small business owners were the most optimistic about their business improving during 2012, while Iowans were the least optimistic.
  • The South was the most small-business-friendly region of the country, while New England was rated the most hostile.

View the full survey results, including state-by-state breakdowns, here.

Image by Flickr user cote (Creative Commons)

The views expressed here are the author's alone and not those of Network Solutions or its partners.

Get more small business resources from Network Solutions

Web.com is now offering forums designed to support small businesses in cities throughout the US. Learn more about these forums here: http://Businessforum.web.com/

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Accounting and Taxes, Business Law, Compliance, Small Business, small business, Workforce | No Comments »

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 24th, 2012 at 6:00 am and is filed under Accounting and Taxes, Business Law, Compliance, Small Business, small business, Workforce. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.