Kansas City construction business worries how fiscal cliff vote will impact employees

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Partners at one local construction company are concerned about how the fiscal cliff vote will affect their employees and their company.

Centric Projects is a small business founded in Kansas City, Mo., in 2010.

Richard Wetzel is one of three partners at Centric Projects. He said that after Tuesday night's last-minute vote, his company had to scramble to get payroll completed.

“(It's) a little uncomfortable that we as business owners and workers in this country would be put in this situation where we would have to not know what a paycheck is going to be literally eight hours before it’s going to be cut,” Wetzel explained.

Because Congress did not extend the payroll tax cut, employees will have 6.2 percent taken out of their checks instead of 4.2 percent.

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“It affects their household budget, it affects how much they’re going to be able to spend on groceries and sending their kids to college,” Wetzel added.

But he did say the higher taxes might be good for the construction business.

“When taxes are higher, it may make sense for more people to make more capital investments because they don’t want the profits,” Wetzel explained. "They would rather spend money on the business and not pay a higher level of tax."

Still, he is concerned about the future. Congress has until March to vote on a budget.

“If we don’t meet our debt obligations or don’t convince the rest of the world that we might meet our debt obligations, that’s a scarier thing to me than individual tax rates,” Wetzel said.

He said no matter what, his partners and employees will continue the day-to-day business of finding work, completing projects and making their company successful.