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SBA Size Standards Proposal Withdrawn
On July 1, the Small Business Administration (SBA) withdrew its March 19, 2004, proposed rule to restructure small business size standards.
The rule proposed to simplify size standards by establishing number of employees as a common standard for all industries and by reducing the number of individual size standard levels from 37 to 10. The current 37 standards are based either on monetary amounts or on number of employees. To date, SBA received well over 3,700 public comments. AGC filed comments expressing the proposed rule would have several negative impacts on small businesses. Of utmost concern, approximately 35,000 companies would lost their small business certification overnight should the proposed rule have gone forward.
SBA intends to issue an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) to collect additional information to review the issues raised by the comments on the proposed rule. AGC filed comments concerns about SBA's methodology for developing the proposed size standards, the impact the proposed size standards will have on existing small businesses, the determination of the employee size of a business, and SBA's proposed overall approach to simplifying the size standards. Further review of these issues are expected to result in substantive changes to the proposal. SBA plans to issue a new proposed rule prior to any final rulemaking and AGC plans to continue to work with SBA as the agency continues its research.
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