Tag Archives: SBA size standards

Congress Lengthens Employee-Based Size Standard Period

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If you’re a regular SmallGovCon reader (and we hope you are!), you probably are familiar with the Small Business Runway Extension Act. Under the Runway Extension Act, Congress lengthened the period used to determine small business status under receipts-based size standards, from three to five years. Congress’s laudable goal was to allow businesses to “stay small” longer, but the Runway Extension Act can backfire when a business has been shrinking instead of growing.

Now, Congress has done it again. In the Conference Report to the 2021 NDAA, Congress has extended the period used to measure employee-based size standards, from 12 to 24 months–and whether this is good news may depend on if a business has been growing or shrinking.

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SBA Proposes Increasing Size Standards in Professional, Management, and Administrative Industries

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SBA’s recent proposed rule will increase size standards for a number of industries. The rule also said that SBA was thinking about lowering size standards. While most often, size standards increase over time, SBA can also lower them. However, SBA decided against lowering them. Read on for what standards will change.

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Whose Jurisdiction is it Anyways? GAO Dismisses Size Challenge

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GAO recently dismissed a protest to an awardee’s eligibility under the applicable size standard. The protester argued that the agency should have known that the awardee exceeded the nonmanufacturer rule’s 500-employee maximum. After extensive briefing from both parties and from the SBA itself, GAO found that the awardee’s proposal didn’t raise any issues and that it was really up to the SBA to decide the size issues anyway.

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GAO Report Considers Options to Increase “Mid-Sized” Business Opportunities

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Earlier this month, GAO produced an over 50-page report, presenting a discussion on options for increasing business opportunities for “mid-sized” businesses. It can be tough to go from being a small business to competing with all large businesses, so GAO took a look at these small-ish large businesses.

We know SmallGovCon readers are busy, so we’ll provide the CliffNotes version.

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SBA Announces Increases to Receipts-Based Size Standards

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Make sure to check your NAICS code size standards based on receipts, because SBA is increasing them across the board on August 19 to give small businesses more time to grow. On July 18, the SBA announced it will increase monetary-based industry size standards (meaning receipts-based and assets-based size standards).

This change is a result of adjustments for inflation that the SBA makes every five years. These rules will go into effect August 19, 2019.

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SBA Issues Proposed Rule Implementing Small Business Runway Extension Act

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On Monday, June 24, SBA will issue its long-awaited proposed rule implementing the Small Business Runway Extension Act. We intend to explore the proposed rule and the accompanying commentary more fully over the next few days (as we have been doing over the past few months), but we wanted to provide a quick update to our readers on the main changes in the proposed rule.

The key takeaway is that, once the rule is in place, SBA size standards will be based on a 5-year average. SBA “proposes to change its regulations on the calculation of annual average receipts for all receipts-based SBA size standards and other agencies’ proposed size standards for service-industry firms from a 3-year averaging period to a 5-year averaging period.”

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Runway Extension Act: Congress Strikes Back

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A short time ago in a blog not too far away, we wrote about the newly passed Small Business Runway Extension Act.

Shortly after passage of the Runway Extension Act confusion struck the government contracting world when the SBA openly stated that it would not implement the Runway Extension Act. Recently, the House Committee on Small Business passed H.R. 2345, “Clarifying the Small Business Runway Extension Act” which, in no uncertain terms, tells SBA it has to implement the Runway Extension Act before the end of 2019.

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