Many 8a applicants become ineligible for 8a certification due to the $250,000 net worth limit. This limit excludes your personal residence as well as the value of your business. The key lesson is not to make attempts at hiding assets from the SBA. The SBA has a great deal of knowledge regarding understanding the size of a business and looking at two years tax returns to know what an individuals net worth is. The catch with the sba is always that I need to have enough money and business that they deem my business to have a high likelihood of success while at the same time if I have excess capital that is outside of my business then I am no longer deemed economically disadvantaged. Some planning can be done to mitigate this problem if the individuals net worth is close to $250,000, such as selling securities and investing the money in the primary resdience but for individuals with extremely high net worths it is difficult or impossible to work around this clause in the sba application.