Thursday 19 September 2013

Is Your Business Small Enough To Obtain 8a Certification?

You may own a business, which you consider it to be small. But what is most important is that whether the Small Business Administration considers your business to be small. The SBA will only consider your company to be small if it finds out that you adhere to the size standards set by them. This means only if your company meets the SBA size standards, it will be considered to be a small business by the Small Business Administration. Unless your firm is small, it won’t be able to get the 8a certification.
Now, the question is what is a small business according to the SBA. The SBA defines it either on the number of employees the firm has or on the basis of the annual receipts over the last three years. A manufacturing and mining company should not be having more than 500 employees if the firm wants it to be considered small by the SBA. A non manufacturing firm on the other hand are judged on the basis of their annual revenue, which is set by the SBA as 7 million dollars. This means a non-manufacturing firm shouldn’t have earned more than the specified amount in a year if it wants its business to get approval from the agency for SBA 8a certification.

The Small Business Administration even defines a small sized business as an enterprise, which:

Has a business location in United States
Is established for making profits
Operates mainly within the United States or contributes largely to the economy of U.S. through paying taxes or using American materials, products or labor
Is operated and owned independently
8a Small Business Certification
8a Small Business Certification
The company can be a partnership, sole proprietorship or corporation. Since all the federal agencies should use the size standards set by the SBA for the contracts, you must choose NAICS codes, which best describe the firm and then see if it meets the size standards for the chosen NAICS codes. If you want, you can even make use of the Size Standards Tool for finding out the size of your business.

After you find out that your business is small, there are few more things which you need to make sure your company meets. Your firm apart from being small need to prove to the SBA that it is economically and socially disadvantaged, majority of the company is owned by a disadvantaged individual, the firm has been in business for a minimum of two years and so on. To find out all these requirements of the SBA 8a certification, get in touch with an 8a certification consultant who can explain you in detail about the requirements.

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