Self Made Archive

As you may have noticed, Facebook rolled out their star rating system onto business pages last month. In reality, the star rating system has been in place on Facebook's mobile app for places for quite some time. However, November is when they officially rolled it out for business pages on the standard browser version of Facebook.

Earlier this week, the NASE submitted a statement for the record to the House Ways and Means Committee in response to the committee’s hearing on the status of the ACA enrollment. In the NASE statement, we expressed our concerns that leading up to the October 1st launch, the administration was not providing sufficient details and answers regarding the Exchange Marketplace. With the lackluster launch, we are now asking congress to eliminate the open enrollment deadlines for the 2014 calendar year and to delay the individual mandate penalty for one tax-filing year.

As many of you already know, starting at the beginning of the month, the Government shut down for 16 days. Standard & Poor estimates that the shutdown cost the U.S. economy $24 billion during that span. While many government employees were directly affected, they were not the only ones. Many small businesses felt the effects of the shutdown in every corner of the country.

Last week, we released an infographic to increase awareness about the upcoming changes to Health Care and how it relates to the twenty three million self-employed in this country. Next week, on October 1st, national and state health care Exchanges will begin open enrollment. Currently, the federal government has provided limited details and incomplete information which makes it difficult to plan and make decisions regarding your health care in the future.

Earlier this year, we here at the NASE announced a partnership with the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council (SBE Council) and Fundable to launch a crowdfunding contest. The contest was a great success for many small businesses and the winner that emerged was The Cookie Bar from Las Vegas, Nevada.