Government Discrimination Against Small Business via ICE Audits!
The government Small Business Set-Aside (SBSA) program is designed to make sure that a significant portion (23% currently) of federal contract spending goes to small business. On the surface this sounds like the government is very interested in making small businesses succeed. After all, current statistics show that over 50% of the private workforce is employed by small businesses. Certainly if the government is interested in putting America back to work it would do things that favor small business, right? Why then, is there discrimination going on within the government against small businesses.
The discrimination I’m talking about is relative to the Incurred Cost Audits (ICE Audit).
Currently these ICE Audits are delayed by several years due to work overload within the DCAA. Some are as much as 4 or 5 years late. By the time the DCAA audits the company many of the contracts may be long concluded. But if the DCAA finds a problem with a 5 year old ICE report, they require the contractor to pay the government back the money. This penalty many times is too much for a small business to withstand and the resulting penalty can result in business failure. If that is not discriminating against small business, I don’t know what is. There is an appeal process available to the Armed Services Board but many times this is too expensive and too time consuming for small business. The government should end this descrimination against small business by either doing timely ICE audits or overlooking the audits they can't get to in time.The government Small Business Set-Aside (SBSA) program is designed to make sure that a significant portion (23% currently) of federal contract spending goes to small business. On the surface this sounds like the government is very interested in making small businesses succeed. After all, current statistics show that over 50% of the private workforce is employed by small businesses. Certainly if the government is interested in putting America back to work it would do things that favor small business, right? Why then, is there discrimination going on within the government against small businesses.
The discrimination I’m talking about is relative to the Incurred Cost Audits.
Currently these ICE Audits are delayed by several years due to work overload within the DCAA. Some are as much as 4 or 5 years late. By the time the DCAA audits the company many of the contracts may be long concluded. But if the DCAA finds a problem with a 5 year old ICE report, they require the contractor to pay the government back the money. This penalty many times is too much for a small business to withstand and the resulting penalty can result in business failure. If that is not discriminating against small business, I don’t know what is. There is an appeal process available to the Armed Services Board but many times this is too expensive and too time consuming for small business.