Small Businesses Welcome in Utah

Utah ranked as one of the top friendliest states for small businesses according to Thumbtack.com, in partnership with the Kauffman Foundation. Utah came in fourth, among other high-ranking states that included Idaho, Texas and Oklahoma.

“Utah's ranking indicates that small businesses view the state as being one of the most supportive locations for having a small business,” said Sander Daniels, co-founder of Thumbtack.com. “Furthermore, Utah earned an 'A' as the 5th best state for its licensing regulations, a very important, and often overlooked, facet of small business success or failure.”

According to Daniels, Utah overcame rivals in a variety of rankings, earning an A-, A or A+ grade in 9 of 12 possible rankings. The state's top score was an A+ for its ranking as third easiest state in the country for starting a new business. Utah’s businesses were also the third most optimistic nationwide about their economic future.

“After a two-month survey of over 6,000 small business owners nationwide, Utah again comes out on top as one of the nation's friendliest states for small business,” said Daniels. “For small businesses looking for a place to hang a shingle or to plant a flag – they can’t do much better than Utah”

Thumbtack.com surveyed 6,022 small businesses across the United States. The survey asked questions about the friendliness of states towards small business and about small business finances.

The 17 categories were:

• Overall small business friendliness
• Ease of starting a small business
• Cost of hiring a new employee
• Overall regulatory friendliness
• Friendliness of health and safety regulations
• Friendliness of employment, labor and hiring regulations
• Friendliness of tax code
• Friendliness of licensing regulations
• Friendliness of environmental regulations
• Friendliness of zoning regulations
• Publicity of training programs
• Publicity of networking programs
• Current economic health of small business
• Change in revenue over past 12 months
• Forecast of small businesses’ future economic health
• Perception of national economic health
• Perception of state economic health versus national economic health 

To see more from the survey, visit www.thumbtack.com/ut.
(5.24.12)