Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick’s (R-Bucks) legislation to lessen the regulatory burdens he sees on small businesses passed the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday.

“The committee passage of the Fostering Innovation Act is step one toward removing the burden of one-size-fits-all regulations that force small businesses with potential to grow to direct effort toward compliance, not research and development,” Fitzpatrick said. “This simple legislation is an effort to support emerging companies so that they have the ability to hire, develop and succeed in an economy that needs some positive movement.”

The Fostering Innovation Act would increase the cap in public float for small businesses to be considered non-accelerated filers, a grouping of businesses that pay lower regulatory fees. Currently, to be considered a non-accelerated filer, a business must possess a public float – or a portion of shares in the hands of public investors – of no more than 75 million dollars.

Fitzpatrick’s legislation would amend the classifications so that any business with less than 250 million dollars in public float or less than 100 million dollars in revenue could receive the classification of a non-accelerated filer, and thus would face fewer regulatory burdens.

Additionally, Fitzpatrick gave this week’s Financial Services Committee’s address, in which he promoted his bill.

“In order for small businesses to thrive and to grow, we need to understand that they face different challenges and require different financial considerations than much larger established public companies,” he said. “It is burdensome and extremely costly for these small businesses and startups to comply with the rules that are not necessarily appropriate given the size of their company.”

The act now awaits action by the full House of Representatives.