Includes decisions of the SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals, including size appeal decisions, service-disabled veteran-owned small business appeal decisions, NAICS code appeal decisions, and women-owned small business appeal decisions.
A size appeal filed with the SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals may be submitted by email, but it is up to the appellant to verify that its email was received.
As demonstrated in a recent size appeal decision, OHA will dismiss an appeal that is not received by OHA within 15 days of the appellant’s receipt of a size determination–even if the appellant attempted to send the size appeal by email during the 15-day window.
Under the SBA’s affiliation rules, the so-called “inter-affiliate transactions” exception applies only where the companies in question would be eligible to file a consolidated tax return.
In a recent size appeal decision, the SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals held that the inter-affiliate transactions exception does not apply when affiliated companies are ineligible to file a consolidated tax return–a result that seems to authorize “double counting” of affiliated companies’ revenues in the context of SBA size determinations.
Even if the VA Center for Verification and Evaluation has found that a service-disabled veteran “unconditionally” controls a SDVOSB, the SBA may nonetheless determine that other individuals or entities also control the company within the meaning of the SBA’s affiliation rules.
As demonstrated by a recent decision of the SBA’s Office of Hearings and Appeals, VA CVE verification does not shield a SDVOSB from an adverse SBA affiliation determination, even if that determination is based on a finding that non-veterans control the company.
A business was not engaged in “manufacturing” within the meaning of the SBA’s regulations where the firm provided another entity with specifications and financing, and the second entity produced the end item being acquired by the government.
As demonstrated in a recent SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals decision, being a “manufacturer” means engaging in the primary activities of transforming substances into an end item. Merely providing specifications and financing doesn’t do the trick.
A contractor did not qualify as a small business under the non-manufacturer rule where it proposed to sell foreign-made products–even though the contractor itself was well below the solicitation’s 500-employee size standard.
In a recent decision, the SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals held that a contractor was ineligible to be awarded a small business set-aside contract for manufactured products because the products were to be manufactured in Turkey.
An 8(a) small business was found to be affiliated with its large subcontractor under the ostensible subcontractor rule based in part on the fact that the large subcontractor was providing mentoring services to the small business–even though the SBA had rejected a proposed mentor-protege agreement between the companies.
The recent decision of the SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals in Size Appeal of Brown & Pipkins LLC, SBA No. SIZ-5621 (2014) is a warning to 8(a) firms about the potential dangers of accepting mentoring services outside the confines of a SBA-approved mentor-protege agreement.
A firm will not qualify as a small business for a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant if it does not meet the SBIR program’s regulatory ownership and control requirements–and those requirements can be confusing.
In a recent size appeal decision, the SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals explained how the SBIR program’s ownership and control requirements work in practice.