COVID-19 Relief Law Turbocharges Employee Retention Credit

Before the December 27, 2020, enactment of the new COVID-19 relief law, you may have chosen the PPP loan and given no thought to the employee retention credit.

Remember, under the original law, you had to choose between the retention credit and the PPP loan. Millions chose the PPP loan route.

But now the game has changed. You may, as a PPP recipient, qualify to take the employee retention credit retroactively for tax year 2020 and also going forward in tax year 2021.

Here are the key changes you as a PPP player need to know:

·   PPP loan recipients can retroactively claim the 2020 employee retention credit for wages not paid with forgiven PPP loan proceeds.

·   Wages paid from March 13, 2020, through December 31, 2020, qualify for the retroactive credit.

·   Wages paid from January 1, 2021, through June 30, 2021, can qualify for the more significant 2021 credit.

·   For 2021 quarters only, you qualify for the credit if your gross receipts for a calendar quarter are less than 80 percent of gross receipts from the same quarter in tax year 2019. Alternatively, you can elect to qualify for a quarter by comparing the gross receipts of the immediately preceding quarter with the corresponding quarter in 2019.

·   For 2021 quarters only, the relaxed requirements for qualifying wages apply to businesses with 500 or fewer 2019 full-time employees.