Small Scale Businesses

A business can be of a variety of sizes, dependent on the category, industry, and other parameters. The Small Business Administration guidelines will define a "small" business as having up to a $33 million dollar income or 500 employees.

Size standards by industry are published on The Small Business Administration's web site. This publication is a condensed version of small business definitions, related to every North American Industry Classification system code. For example; a business is considered small even if it has $33 million in revenue, at the same time a "small" cereal manufacturer can have up to 1000 employees.

According to the Centre for Economic and Policy Research there are fewer Americans self-employed than other European Union nations. It is a widespread misconception that Americans are more self-employed than those of other countries. Only 7.2 percent of the American work force can be qualified as self-employed. American small businesses have only a few employees, and, therefore, truly "small" businesses.

The Small Business Administration, as well as the American Recovery Reinvestment Act of 2009 offers "small businesses" separate loan programs, development and research support, and other services, being qualified because they are small businesses.

The Small Business Administration has assigned a maximum amount of employees, and an upper limit of revenue through the definitions of the North American Industry Classification System of categories for businesses.

The United States is the only country that the Small Business Administration's guidelines apply to. Each individual state and the District of Columbia may assign their own classification system relevant to their state and local programs and guidelines.

One benefit of being considered a small business is that the Small Business Administration has set aside a large array of federal contracts, services and loan programs for small businesses that are eligible specific. The Table of Small Business Size Standards should always be referenced to determine whether or not a specific business may be eligible for the small business consideration under the federal government definitions.

There are billions of dollars available for small business owners in the form of grants, which do not have to be paid back. Of course, there are certain criteria that the small businesses must meet to be eligible for the grants, but it is worth checking into to be able to receive free money from the government. Some of the grants that are available include minority grants.