More than 200 national and state-based trade groups wrote to congressional leadership today calling on Congress to increase funding for Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans.

That program was authorized by the CAREs Act last month and, among many other programs, provided individually and family-owned businesses with $350 billion in loans to help those businesses retain their employees during the COVID-19 crisis.

According to the latest figures from the Small Business Administration, however, applications to date number over million and nearly$300 billion of the initial authorization.  The expectation is that the program will run out of authorization by the end of the …

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Is the loss limitation relief in the CAREs Act an unwarranted giveaway, as claimed by the Washington Post this week?  That’s a big “N-O.”  As others have noted, this relief prevents the “recession bombs” of the underlying NOL and loss limitation rules from inflicting damage on Main Street during the COVID-19 crisis.

Here’s the reality and why 120 Main Street business groups asked Congress to adopt this provision earlier this year:

• The benefit is timing only: Aside from some limited rate arbitrage, any tax reductions allowed by the loss limitation relief this year would have otherwise been claimed in …
  
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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 …

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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 …

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