Category Archives: Small Business

Florida’s ‘don’t say gay’ bill author indicted for money laundering

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Federal grand jury also charged Republican lawmaker Joe Harding with ‘fraudulently obtaining’ $150,000 in Covid relief funds

A federal grand jury has indicted Florida state representative Joe Harding, the Republican lawmaker who authored the “don’t say gay” bill, for Covid business relief fraud and money laundering, the justice department announced on Wednesday.

Between December 2020 and March 2021, Harding, 35, committed wire fraud when he took part in a “scheme to defraud” the Small Business Administration and obtained Covid-related relief funds for small businesses under false pretenses, according to a federal indictment.

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Cooking oil price surges hurt Australian takeaway outlets including fish and chips

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Covid-induced inflation, drought in Canada and global instability are putting the squeeze on key ingredients of a national staple

Takeaway businesses are feeling the pinch as prices surge for cooking oil and potatoes – two key ingredients of an Australian staple: fish and chips.

Justin Quinton, the owner of Saltmine Fish and Chips in the New South Wales Hunter region, told Guardian Australia his Salamander Bay eatery previously used a blend of cottonseed, canola and sunflower oil.

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Covid fraud: how bounce back loans paid for cars, watches and even porn

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As details emerge, concerns grow about Treasury’s efforts to recover almost £5bn wrongly claimed

When Keith Hamblett, a fruit and vegetable seller from Tyne and Wear, asked his bank for a government-backed loan in the autumn of 2020, the economy was still in trouble after lockdowns, and coronavirus cases were rising.

The Covid bounce back loan scheme was a welcome relief for many smaller companies, and Hamblett received £28,000.

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Most small firms fear long-term fallout from UK’s cost of living crisis

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Half worry rocketing prices will cut spending, while three in four fear long-term damage to businesses

Three-quarters of small and medium-sized companies are worried about the long-term impact the cost of living crisis, soaring energy bills and rising inflation will have on their business, a survey has found.

Just over half (51%) of SMEs said they were concerned that rocketing prices would dent consumer spending, in response to Barclays’ SME Barometer, a quarterly survey of business sentiment conducted for the bank.

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Van drivers in UK will need new operating licences to enter EU from May

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Latest Brexit red tape will come into force alongside a series of further checks at Dover and other ports

Van drivers will be required to get new international operating licences if they want to travel back and forth to the EU from May next year, the government has announced.

The additional red tape will come into force next year alongside a series of further checks at Dover and other ports that were delayed three times in 2021 because of lack of preparation for Brexit in Great Britain.

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Dutch to investigate business trio’s €100m face mask deal

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Scrutiny of government procedures after ‘not-for-profit’ PPE contract led to ‘€20m enrichment’

The Dutch government has promised an independent investigation into a supposedly not-for-profit €100m (£86m) deal to buy face masks from China last year that ended up making three young entrepreneurs about €20m richer.

The investigative website Follow the Money (FTM) revealed that Sywert van Lienden, 30, a former civil servant turned TV pundit and activist, who co-wrote the manifesto of the Christian Democrat (CDA) party (part of the ruling coalition), netted €9.2m.

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Rishi Sunak to offer ‘help to grow’ training for SME managers

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Small businesses will receive help in Wednesday’s budget to boost tech and management skills

The bosses of small businesses are to be invited back to school to brush up on their management skills, under plans to be announced in the budget designed to help close Britain’s productivity gap with rival nations.

As part of the attempt to speed up the UK’s recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, will unveil a “help to grow” scheme that will offer the leaders of up to 130,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) the chance of MBA-style management training.

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Yorkshire lobster exporter says Brexit costs have forced it to close

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Government has not been straight with fishing industry, says Sam Baron of Baron Shellfish in Bridlington

A lobster exporter who is winding up his 60-year-old family business has blamed the government for failing to be honest about Brexit red tape and hidden costs.

Sam Baron, who worked alongside his father to set up Baron Shellfish in Bridlington, east Yorkshire, said the government had failed to be straight with the fishing industry.

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‘A Brexit nightmare’: the British businesses being pushed to breaking point

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Less than a month after leaving the EU, trade is flowing so badly that small firms are moving operations abroad to survive

Christophe Fricke lectures in German at the University of Bristol and adores living in England. He was born in Germany but his anglophilia became so strong after moving here that he wrote a book called 111 Gründe, England zu lieben (“111 Reasons to Love England”) in 2018. He selected the gardens of Cornwall, the National Portrait Gallery, the way the English use collective nouns for groups of animals (herds, packs, and so on) and their fascination with murder cases in his varied list of reasons for loving this country.

But since 1 January, Fricke has been reminded that there are also worrying things about life in England – and being outside the EU is now chief among them.

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Shock Brexit charges are hurting us, say small British businesses

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Levies to cover the increase in red tape, VAT and customs declarations are hitting trade to the European Union

Government ministers describe the post-Brexit headaches that British exporters have suffered since 1 January as mere “teething problems”. But Alex Paul, who jointly runs a successful family business that features in the Department for International Trade’s list of national “export champions”, disagrees. And he wants the real story to be told.

Two weeks into the supposed golden era of global Britain, Paul and many other British entrepreneurs, large and small, are running into very serious problems.

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Facebook’s attempt to vilify Apple tastes like sour grapes

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Analysis: Facebook says objections to Apple feature that affects apps are bid to defend small businesses – but do we believe it?

Never afraid of a challenge, Facebook appears to have embarked on a campaign to convince the world to hate Apple, love targeted advertising, and believe the social network when it says it is doing it all out of a desire to defend small businesses.

On Wednesday, the company launched a series of full-page newspaper adverts and a press conference where the company put forward small businesses who said they relied on app-tracking to find customers. It also announced it would be siding with the Fortnite developer Epic Games in the latter’s lawsuit over control of the iOS App Store.

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‘It’s a ghost town’: Can America’s oldest Chinatown survive Covid-19?

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The pandemic has devastated small businesses across the US, and San Francisco’s Chinatown has been particularly hard-hit

Iron gates and metal doors appeared to shutter the fronts of every other shop, their once-bustling entrances overflowing with brightly colored knickknacks now quiet and tightly contained. Some art stores still had ornate sculptures visible, collecting dust in the dark behind the gates. Others were completely empty, cavernous and blank.

Related: Fatigued Californians are back in lockdown. Will it work?

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Covid leaves 6m UK small businesses and 16m jobs in ‘precarious position’

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Survey finds nearly two-thirds of entrepreneurs believe their business may not survive pandemic

An estimated 6m small businesses in the UK supporting 16.6m jobs are in a financially precarious position as a result of the pandemic, a London business school has warned.

Nearly two-thirds of entrepreneurs felt their business might not survive the pressures of Covid-19, while more than half predicted they would run out of money within the next 12 months, according to the new study from King’s Business School.

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Ann Patchett on running a bookshop in lockdown: ‘We’re a part of our community as never before’

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The novelist reveals how the store she co-owns in Nashville is making, and remaking, plans to get books to readers who want them more than ever

We closed Parnassus Books, the bookstore I co-own in Nashville, on the same day all the stores around us closed. I can’t tell you when that was because I no longer have a relationship with my calendar.

All the days are now officially the same. My business partner Karen and I talked to the staff and told them if they didn’t feel comfortable coming in that was fine. We would continue to pay them for as long as we could. But if they were OK to work in an empty bookstore, we were going to try to keep shipping books.

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House Votes Today on ‘Tax Reform 2.0,’ But Senate Action Unlikely Before Elections

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The House today is likely to approve legislation to make permanent the individual and small-business tax cuts that Congress enacted in 2017, but the Senate won't consider the measure before the November midterm elections. Today's vote is part of a three-bill package of tax relief dubbed "Tax Reform 2.0." The House on Thursday approved legislation by Rep. Mike Kelly , R-Pa., that would expand retirement savings incentives and legislation by Rep. Vern Buchanan , R-Fla., to expand tax breaks for startups.

Tehachapi hosts meeting to help rural communities with economic development

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Tehachapi hosted the California Association for Local Economic Development, Rural Economic Development Exchange meeting at the Slice of Life Enrichment School. A coalition of economic representatives from rural cities met in Tehachapi on Wednesday to gain resources from each other, share ideas and discuss legislative policies that impact their regions.