If you are like most Americans, you receive tons of junk mail, which you tend to discard without ever reading. Well, if you haven’t already received your stimulus payment from the feds, maybe you shouldn’t be so quick to throw away those envelopes from unknown senders, at least until you have received your stimulus payment.
If you are the owner of a small business that was able to obtain a Paycheck Projection Program (PPP) Loan, you have probably already started worrying about how you are supposed to spend the loan proceeds to maximize loan forgiveness.
It Isn’t Just for the 2019 Individual Tax Return
Due to the COVID-19 emergency, the IRS provided taxpayers with an automatic three-month extension to July 15 to file their 2019 tax returns and pay the 2019 tax, among other tax actions normally due on April 15. So, with July 15th fast approaching, it is important to understand that the day is more than just the deadline for filing your 2019 tax return. It is also the deadline for other things tax. Here is a rundown.
IRS Has Provided Time Waivers for Exclusion
The IRS has provided relief for taxpayers who were working abroad and returned to the U.S. because of the COVID-19 pandemic before meeting the foreign residency requirements that would qualify them to exclude or deduct all or a portion of the income they earned while working in a foreign country.
Now that you have gotten a Paycheck Protection Program loan (PPP), it is time to start planning how to spend the loan proceeds so some portion of the loan will be forgiven.
As the loan title implies, the purpose of the loans is to enable employers to keep their employees on staff and maintain their normal rates of pay during the 8-week period immediately following the funding of the loan. The term of a PPP loan is 2 years at an interest rate of 1%, and any portion of the loan not forgiven must be repaid at the end of the 2-year period.
COVID-19 has had an unprecedented impact on all aspects of American businesses, but perhaps none have been as severely affected as small business owners. Surviving this disaster will require more than just time: you will need to take a pragmatic view of what has happened and what steps you are willing and able to take in order to bounce back. Here are our suggestions:
Special Benefits May Apply to You
The CARES Act includes Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) provisions that extend and supplement state-provided unemployment insurance and are intended to lessen the financial burdens on individuals who have lost their jobs because of the COVID-19 emergency by allowing states to extend unemployment benefits up to 13 weeks and waiving the normal one-week waiting period. The provisions also extend the benefits to individuals who are self-employed, seeking part-time employment, or otherwise ineligible for regular unemployment compensation.
President Trump has signed the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act (PPP & HCE Act), a $484 billion package which was passed by both the Senate and the House the week of April 20, 2020.
The IRS has already sent out 80 million stimulus payments to taxpayers that included their direct deposit information on their most recently filed 2019 or 2018 return. So, if you had filed either your 2019 or 2018 return before the direct deposits were issued, you should already have the money in the bank, UNLESS:
Congress has provided a refundable employer retention credit available to all qualifying employers regardless of size, including tax-exempt organizations to help businesses retain employees and keep them employed during the COVID-19 crisis. To qualify for the credit, employers must fall into one of two categories:
