The Internal Revenue Service released guidance this month to clarify the accounting treatment of payments under the Paycheck Protection Program and caused some consternation among some small businesses and tax experts. Many business owners who applied for loans under the PPP had the expectation the loans would be forgiven as long as their employees were paid for eight weeks, and the businesses would be able to write off their expenses as they traditionally have been able to do. The guidance puts this in doubt.
Notice 2020-32 clarifies that no deduction is allowed under the Internal Revenue Code for an expense that is otherwise deductible if the payment of the expense results in forgiveness of a covered loan under the CARES Act. The income associated with the forgiveness is excluded from gross income.
Brett Erickson is managing principal of Obsidian Risk Advisors. He also serves on the advisory board of Loyola University Chicago's Center for Compliance Studies.
Jeff Moore is a seasoned professional with an impressive career spanning over three decades at ATI Restoration. Throughout his tenure, Jeff's strategic vision and industry knowledge have been instrumental in driving growth and expansion for the company. His leadership has transformed ATI from a regional restoration firm with revenue of $20M into America's largest family-operated restoration company, boasting over 70+ offices nationwide and revenue exceeding $900M.
As president and chief acquisitions officer, Jeff leads the executive team, spearheads acquisitions, and is the driving force behind ATI's ongoing growth. Over the past four years, Jeff and his dedicated mergers and acquisitions team have successfully negotiated, finalized, and integrated 18 strategic acquisitions, tripling EBITDA, doubling revenue, and multiplying the number of locations threefold. In addition to his work at ATI, Jeff advocates for the restoration industry and proudly holds the position of President for the Restoration Industry Association (RIA).
Brenna Johnson, SVP, product management at EZLynx, is a driving force behind several of the company's newest products. Johnson is passionate about leveraging technology to solve problems for independent insurance agents. As vice president of product management, she is actively involved in all phases of the development life cycle, and hopes to help transform the insurance industry by leveraging technology to improve agency profitability, productivity and serviceability.
Under section 1106(b) of the CARES Act, a recipient of a covered loan can receive forgiveness of indebtedness on the loan in an amount equal to the sum of payments made for the following expenses — payroll costs, any payment of interest on any covered mortgage obligation, any payment on any covered rent obligation and any covered utility payment — during the eight-week “covered period” beginning on the covered loan’s origination date.
The Paycheck Protection Program was designed to provide economic relief for businesses in the wake of COVID-19. If the requirements of section 1106(b) are met, PPP proceeds are excluded from taxable income and the corresponding PPP expenses that are essentially being reimbursed are not tax deductible despite being classified as ordinary expenses under section 162 of the Tax Code. Thus, PPP funding is a tax-exempt “wash” — PPP expenses are not tax deductible to the extent of tax-exempt PPP income. Since “PPP wages” are not currently tax deductible under the program, it will be interesting to see how businesses will be directed to prepare W-2s for 2020.
The CARES Act provides for the payment of fees from PPP funds for the processing of applications on a sliding scale beginning at a rate of 5 percent for loans up to $350,000. These fees have generally become earmarked for banks and other financial institutions despite the hope that many accounting and legal professionals would be eligible for these fees for services rendered in assisting clients to generate the needed paperwork throughout the application process. Banks are receiving tens of millions of dollars in fees from PPP funds to process loans for which they are not at risk. Banks are also collecting transfer fees from PPP funds when these proceeds are wired into business accounts.
The CARES Act legislation stimulus checks were processed based upon Form 1040 filings — essentially bypassing an application process. Similarly, perhaps PPP funding would be more efficiently disbursed if allocations were based upon prior Form 941 filings instead of assessing the same payroll information through a costly application process. Another relief measure would be to allow businesses to take tax deductions for PPP expenses despite the tax-exempt nature of PPP proceeds.
