PPP HALT!

Hang in there and take a short breather! The last many months it’s felt like everyone’s rushed to meet deadlines around PPP but now disagreements between the lawmakers has put everything to a screeching HALT.

There’s a HALT on the next round of Coronavirus Relief for small businesses.  A HALT on Small Business Association (SBA) accepting new applications and now many CPAs are recommending business owner’s HALT on filing for forgiveness.  

$659 billion was provided to SBA to be distributed to small business for relief due to the pandemic effecting the health of these businesses. This program expired on August 8th with an estimated amount of over $100 billion remaining in the program to be disbursed. We all had expected answers on the guidelines for forgiveness, with the expectation that loans of $150,000 or less to just be automatically forgiven.

History of the loans and status:

In April, Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) was created from The CARESs Act which put $349 billion to the SBA. The average PPP loan value is just over $100,000 (based on cumulative national average). Later, Congress added $310 billion for PPP and Health Care Enhancement Act and the majority of what’s been distributed from this are loans under $50,000. 

SBA opened their platform to file for forgiveness but no ones rushing to do it because their holding out on answers about the deductibility issues and the possibility their loan might already be granted forgiveness. 

If you’re looking for answers, on Aug 11th the SBA posted an 18 page Frequently Answered Questions about the Paycheck Protection Program Loans but there are still lots of unanswered questions. 

So what do we do while we we’re at a halt?
Prepare and get our ducks in a row!

Even without answers on important guidelines that will effect what and how we file, we know our ducks (aka clients) need to get their documents and receipts together and maintained until we’ve answer and ready for our next steps.

 Source: American Banker, American Action Forum, CNBC