On March 30, Tom Nichols and Brian Reardon held an S-Corp Member call covering essential parts of the Phase II and Phase III bills passed by Congress in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including:

• The new mandated leave provisions;
• The delayed income tax deadline and payroll tax holiday; and
• The new small business loan program

Tom Nichols is a shareholder at Meissner Tierney Fisher & Nichols in Milwaukee and the long-time Chair of the S Corporation Association …

(Read More)

It appears Washington is coalescing around a set of policies to help families and businesses while the economy is effectively shut down.  California’s “stay home” order is illustrative of the challenge – how do businesses survive when the government is telling everybody to stay home?

Just a week after states and localities began aggressively telling people to stay home, most businesses are confronting an indefinite period of sharply reduced demand or, in some cases, no demand at all.  For those businesses, the key question is how much cash do they have and how long can they keep their workers on payroll …

(Read More)

Yesterday, over 100 business groups wrote to the Congress and the Administration requesting that the response to the economic crisis confronting us is on the same scale as steps being taken to respond to the virus itself.  Entire portions of the economy have been shut down, and already businesses are closing their doors and laying off workers.  For the economic response to be effective, it needs to be broad and it needs to be in place quickly.

Here’s the text of the letter.  You can access the pdf and the signatories here.

…

(Read More)

We interrupted our impeachment viewing last week for a Brookings Institute briefing exploring various ways the Congress could raise taxes. A book of revenue raising recommendations accompanying the briefing weighed in at a hefty 368 pages.  According to the book’s editors, “This book is about taxes. It poses a simple question: Given that the United States needs more revenue, how should we raise it?”

It’s too early for us to digest all 368 pages, but the book raises one issue that’s worth exploring from the onset – the progressivity of the U.S. Tax Code and which direction we’re headed.  …

(Read More)