Government Watch

A House bill reported by the Small Business Committee would increase small businesses' awareness of available health insurance options.

The IRS is proposing to change how employers calculate the yearly contribution they must make to a traditional single-employer pension plan, updating the rules for target normal cost and funding target to match later statutory amendments.

The Small Business Administration is proposing new size thresholds for 338 industries that would change which companies count as small businesses and thus who can get SBA loans, federal contracting set-asides, and related benefits.

The Small Business Administration has updated the method it uses to decide which companies count as small businesses and is asking the public to comment on that method, which it has already applied to a concurrent proposed review of size thresholds.

The IRS is proposing tax rules on how employers can contribute to Trump Accounts and how dependent-care assistance programs must meet nondiscrimination requirements.

A newly introduced House bill would create a federal effort to help small businesses recruit and train workers, but it has not moved past referral to the Small Business Committee.

A House bill awaiting a floor vote would focus federal small-business attention on gathering insight about child-care businesses and improving how they are supported.

This bill would keep a Medicare experiment going for five more years so certain small rural hospitals that are too large to be critical access hospitals can still be paid based on their actual costs, and hospitals already in the program between late 2024 and the start of 2027 could stay in during the extension.

The House FY2008 budget resolution would set Congress’s revenue, spending, deficit, and debt targets through FY2012 and create reserve funds so later bills on children’s health insurance, taxes, Medicare, agriculture, higher education, energy, and housing could move without breaking those targets.

The IRS proposes letting controlled foreign corporations generally skip computing foreign currency gain or loss when money is remitted from a foreign business unit, except in certain inbound nonrecognition deals.

This bill would let homeowners subtract up to $10,000 a year of insurance premiums on their primary home from taxable income without having to itemize deductions.

The bill would let people subtract up to $10,000 a year of homeowners-insurance premiums on their main home from taxable income, even if they do not itemize deductions.

A 2006 Senate bill would have expanded SBA disaster help so small businesses could get emergency bridge loans and recovery grants after major disasters, with faster processing, higher loan limits, and extra help from small business development centers.

A House bill called the Streamlining Small Business Contracts Act of 2026 has been introduced and sent to the House Small Business Committee, but this item does not say which contracting rules it would change.

This House bill would let small businesses use Small Business Administration disaster loans to cover damage from prolonged power outages.

The Prove It Act of 2024 would require federal agencies to assess indirect regulatory costs on small businesses and create a formal process for small entities to petition the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy to review and overturn agency exemptions from Regulatory Flexibility Act analyses.

The Small Business Administration will no longer automatically seek public comment on rules that the Administrative Procedure Act does not require comments for, and will do so only case by case.

A House bill titled the PROTECT Small Restaurants Act has been introduced and referred to the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The CFTC would let certain SEC-registered investment advisers skip a second CFTC registration when they run commodity pools limited to sophisticated investors, add a matching exemption for commodity trading advisors, and raise the small-pool exemption dollar threshold for inflation.

Shippers can file demurrage and detention charge complaints at the Federal Maritime Commission through the regular ALJ or small-claims process instead of the interim charge-complaint track, and ocean carriers must prove those charges were reasonable.

A House bill titled the Automatic IRA Act of 2025 has been introduced and sent to the Ways and Means Committee, pointing toward a tax-committee vehicle for automatic workplace individual retirement accounts.

A House bill called the Unclaimed Retirement Rescue Plan has been introduced and sent to the Education and Workforce and Ways and Means committees to address unclaimed retirement savings.