Sixteen Fixes for Small Business Went to Congress, and Only the SEC Had to Answer Them

On 27 July 2026 the Securities and Exchange Commission transmitted to Congress its report on the 45th Annual Government-Business Forum on Small Business Capital Formation. The forum was held on 9 March 2026 at SEC headquarters at 100 F Street NE in Washington. The report carries 16 policy recommendations voted on by forum participants across three lifecycle segments, each followed by a written Commission response.

The statute is lopsided. Under 15 U.S.C. 80c-1, subsection (d), a summary of proceedings and any findings or recommendations must go to participants and to appropriate committees of Congress. Subsection (e), which Congress added in 2018, requires the Commission to review the findings and recommendations and, each time one is submitted, to "promptly issue a public statement" assessing it and disclosing what action, if any, it intends to take. The statute sets no deadline. It places no obligation on Congress. No provision requires a committee to act, to report back, or to acknowledge that the report arrived. The report's endnotes name both halves: the agency prepares the report under the Small Business Investment Incentive Act of 1980, and responds under that same act as amended by the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act of 2018.

What happens to the one aimed at Congress

Two of the sixteen need Congress rather than the agency. One is worded "Advance the INVEST Act." The Commission's full published response to it reads: "Congressional action aimed at improving capital formation is a welcome complement to the work we are undertaking at the SEC." The other asks to "Increase the number of investors allowed in a fund structured under Section 3(c)(1) to more than 100 investors." On that one the Commission wrote that "Any amendments to Section 3(c)(1) to change the number of investors allowed would require Congressional action."

Commissioner Hester Peirce's remarks in the report state that the INVEST Act "passed the House and would amend section 3(c)(1) of the Investment Company Act of 1940 to enable a qualifying venture capital fund to have 500 investors and $50 million, up from 250 and $10 million, respectively." The bill is H.R. 3383 in the 119th Congress.

Sixteen, and the reason is a tie

The report publishes the top five recommendations from each of three segments, which comes to fifteen, and the 2025 and 2024 reports each carried fifteen. This one carries sixteen because of a tie: endnote 3 records that in the Growth-Stage Companies and Smaller Funds vote "there was a tie for 5th place, so that section has 6 recommendations."

The Forum at a Glance page puts 125 or more in-person attendees, 700 or more webcast viewers, 39 U.S. states, 10 countries and 12 speakers behind those sixteen.

Four of the sixteen have been asked before. The report does not flag that; this desk established it by reading the 2026, 2025 and 2024 reports against each other.

Two of the four are now on a third outing. The accredited-investor recommendation asks to "Expand the accredited investor definition to include additional measures of sophistication, including through an investor test and experience." The 2025 version ended at "investor test," and 2024's said "investor certification course or test." The non-dilutive-funding recommendation has also run three years, with 2026 adding an ask for a centralised portal for non-dilutive capital support.

One repeats last year almost word for word: the request to preempt blue sky laws for off-exchange secondary trading in companies that publish information such as that required by Regulation A Tier 2. The fourth repeats 2024's over-the-counter disclosure ask, with "small companies" swapped for "companies traded over-the-counter."

A concept release from 2015

The responses show what an obligation to answer produces. On the transfer-agent part of that disclosure ask, the Commission points back to an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and Concept Release it published in 2015, and says the 2026 Regulatory Agenda indicates Trading and Markets "is considering recommending that the Commission propose updates and refinements." On short-sale data it notes that Rule 13f-2 and Form SHO were adopted on 13 October 2023 and that the compliance date has been extended to 2 January 2028.

Several responses commit to nothing further. The friends-and-family exemption, at-the-market offerings and the Regulation A simplification each draw a variant of one line: the Commission will consider the recommendation when it considers updates to the exempt offering pathways and other initiatives.

Other answers point at live work: two rules proposed on 19 May 2026, and a 7 January 2026 proposal to raise the Regulatory Flexibility Act small-entity thresholds to $1 billion for registered investment advisers and $10 billion for registered investment companies. On the accredited-investor definition, the response says the Chairman "has directed the staff in the Commission's Division of Corporation Finance to begin discussions with FINRA about the possibility of creating an accredited investor examination."

The office that writes the report has no advocate

The forum is organised by the Office of the Advocate for Small Business Capital Formation. The report says Congress established it within the SEC through the bipartisan SEC Small Business Advocate Act of 2016 "to be led by an independent advocate who reports to the entire Commission as well as to multiple committees of Congress."

That post is vacant. The SEC's Small Business Capital Formation Advisory Committee page carries a footnote saying committee members include the agency's Advocate for Small Business Capital Formation, "currently vacant." The 2026 report's own staff photograph caption names thirteen people and no Advocate. The office has two Deputy Directors, Jennifer Riegel and Amy Reischauer, who spoke in that capacity at SEC Speaks on 20 March 2026. Stacey Bowers appeared in the prior year's report and is absent from this one. Why the post is vacant, when it became vacant, and whether a nomination is pending are not established.

Chairman Paul Atkins put numbers on the underlying problem in his own remarks in the report: "84 percent of early-stage businesses struggled to secure capital last year," and "in the first seven months of 2025, roughly forty percent of all venture capital dollars flowed to just ten companies, while the share of deals below $5 million fell to a decade low of forty-nine percent."

Some of the record is missing. Neither this report nor the 2025 or 2024 reports names a single instance of Congress legislating in response to a forum recommendation, and no SEC page found tracks Congressional action on them. The date and roll-call tally of the House vote on H.R. 3383 could not be confirmed from a primary source, and the Senate's Empowering Main Street in America Act was not checked. Nor does the report say how large the field was that its sixteen were drawn from.