Workers in the hair and beauty industry may be getting some assistance thanks to a push from a local Congressman to update current law.
Illinois’ 18th District Congressman Darin LaHood hosted a community roundtable with stakeholders across the hair and beauty industry yesterday to discuss his bipartisan legislation to update current law to provide equitable treatment and administrative relief to these small businesses. Introduced with Democratic Congresswoman Suzan DelBene of Wisconsin, LaHood’s legislation would work to extend the Federal Insurance Contribution Act, or FICA, tax tip credit to employer-based beauty service establishments where tipping is also customary. This update would be similar to what was granted to the food industry in 1993.
According to a press release from Congressman LaHood, currently, over 80 percent of the 1.2 million beauty industry businesses employ less than ten employees, which are predominantly owned and operated by women and minorities.
In a statement released by Congressman LaHood, he says, “One of our primary goals in turning around our economy is to get government out of the way of small business so the private sector can flourish.” LaHood goes on to say that “employers across the hair care and beauty service industry…emphasized the need to create parity in the tax code and roll back burdensome red tape from the IRS, so this rapidly expanding industry can be on level playing field, just as the food and beverage industry was granted a quarter century ago.”
LaHood also says he looks forward to continuing the dialogue that’s been started as the legislation moves forward.