Office of Advocacy Helps Small Businesses Seek Relief from Federal Regulations

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Officials from the SBA Office of Advocacy are crisscrossing the country gathering information from small businesses about challenges presented by federal regulations and ways to improve those regulations. An official progress report is being transmitted to federal rulemaking agencies today.

“Everywhere we go, we hear the same message from small business owners,” said Acting Chief Counsel for Advocacy Major L. Clark III. “Small businesses need relief. They lack the resources and economies of scale that large firms benefit from. Small business owners feel boxed in by burdensome federal regulations,” Clark continued.

President Trump’s Executive Orders 13771 and 13777 direct federal agencies to reduce the private sector’s regulatory burden. Advocacy undertook these regulatory reform efforts to ensure that small businesses’ concerns were heard in this process.

Small businesses were invited to provide input at 33 Regional Regulatory Reform Roundtables in 21 states; at 84 site visits to small companies in 22 states; and in small business forums in 244 cities. Small business owners also submitted hundreds of comments through an online portal.

Advocacy has conveyed small business complaints to federal agencies, and some reforms have already been made. For example, small rehabilitation facilities may now use simplified reimbursement rules and are no longer subject to a 25 percent penalty; the number of small businesses eligible for reduced environmental reporting fees has increased; and small competitive carriers can use a  simplified process for stringing aerial fiber on existing utility poles.

The report contains links to descriptions of individual roundtables and small business site visits around the United States, and it reports on the first steps toward progress in alleviating some of the burdens small businesses face.

The report is called “What Small Businesses Are Saying and What Advocacy Is Doing About It: Progress Report on the Office of Advocacy’s Regional Regulatory Reform Roundtables.” It is available on Advocacy’s Regulatory Reform webpage, https://advocacy.sba.gov/regulatory-reform/regulatory-reform-follow-up.