NACIS 2012
The United States Small Business Administration (SBA) has updated their size standards based on a company’s NAICS codes. NAICS (pronounced NAKES) is an acronym for North American Industry Classifications System, a set of codes used to classify the type of work a business performs or product(s) they provide. The SBA uses the size standards based on these codes to determine if a company meets eligibility requirements for 8(a) certification.
In the past we’ve discussed how to determine if 8(a) certification is right for your company. If you’ve researched getting certified by the SBA in the past, but were unable to move forward with applying for certification because your company did not meet the size standards, now is the time to review the standards again to see if your company is eligible. Beyond certification, these new standards may also mean your company has access to SBA loans.
The SBA is referring to the new size standards as NACIS 2012 and the standards went into effect on October 24th 2012. According to the SBA up “to 13,000 more firms will be small under these new size standards and eligible for SBA loan and Federal procurement programs”. In addition NACIS 2012 “created 76 new industries and reused 11 2007 industry codes with additional or modified content. Those 87 NAICS 2012 industries consist of 208 industries and activities formerly identified in NAICS 2007.”
The updated size standard can be found on the SBA web site (link to the PDF). The SBA’s industry size standards are based on sale size (million dollars) or on the number of employees. You can find out more about the SBA’s size regulations HERE.