An op-ed in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal lays out one of the best cases I’ve seen about why small businesses are concerned – and rightfully so – about higher taxes. Most folks aren’t aware of the excessive burden that small manufacturers already face – payroll taxes, unemployment insurance taxes, federal and state income taxes. Now they’re facing a myriad of increased costs related to the health care bill such as onerous new reporting requirements and higher health care premiums. Add on to that the expiring rates from 2001 and 2003 and the numbers get downright scary. That’s why businesses aren’t hiring – and it’s why Congress needs to wake up and take action to keep rates low.

The op-ed is “Why I’m Not Hiring” by Michael P. Fleischer, sub-headlined, “When you add it all up, it costs $74,000 to put $44,000 in Sally’s pocket and to give her $12,000 in benefits.”

Haven’t quoted Larry Kudlow in quite some time. Rectifying that now, noting his post in NRO’s The Corner, “Washington Needs to Help Businesses for a Change“:

You can begin by stopping the taxing of overseas corporate profits. Do not hike the minimum wage. Back off cap-and-trade. Do not nationalize health care. Stop the anti-trust assault on phone companies, pharmas, Google, airlines, and multi-nationals.

And how about a six-to-twelve-month payroll-tax holiday? That would make it cheaper to hire new workers. What about a corporate tax cut? And immediate cash expensing for business-investment write-offs? In other words, cut the tax cost of hiring, investing, and doing business. Because it’s businesses that create the jobs and the incomes for families all throughout America.

And if you are still worried about the housing story or bank toxic assets, how about a capital-gains tax holiday?

Does anyone in Washington understand the way the world really works? It’s called incentives. That’s what this is all about. And we’re going to need many more of them if businesses, investors, and families are to start prospering once again.

As we’ve noted before, too many politico like jobs just fine, it’s the jobs-creators they’re not so fond of. And those jobs-creators are business.