BELLEVUE, Wash. — At the Bellevue small business called APPS Portamedic, two employees schedule the health tests people get when they apply for life insurance.
Ben Oakley, whom we first met on Twitter, is the owner. Oakley says he'll benefit from the new tax rules for many small businesses.
"Anything from the 20 percent reduction down to 17.5 percent, we have a lot of equipment in our business so we're going to see a tax break there. I was looking at the numbers just based on our simple tax bracket as my wife and I you know it's about a $2,500 benefit just for income tax alone," Oakley said in an interview.
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So, Oakley decided to share the tax break, "Yeah, I sat down with my wife two days ago, I'm like 'if this goes, I want to show people that one, Republicans care about the middle class.' My wife and I are middle class, our staff is middle class.
The employees didn't want to do a TV interview and Oakley wanted to keep the exact size of the bonuses private.
"It's in the thousands, yeah, and the thing I love about it, is for me it wasn't about the amount. It was about how excited my staff were, when I was able to write them a check. That was everything to me," Oakley said.
Oakley showed us how some of the attacks on Twitter continued more than 15 hours after his original tweet.
"The vitriol makes me sad, whatever happened to civilized debate and I guess Twitter's not the location for that anymore."
Oakley benefits from new tax cuts for businesses that pass through their profits directly to the owners, rather than to the stockholders of a corporation.
Critics say that means employees can be subject to higher tax rates than company owners.
Cox Media Group
