Business leaders push Employment Retention Credit as additional aid for businesses hurt during pandemic

DELMARVA- If you are a small business owner, thinking your luck, and federal covid-19 relief has run out; the Employment retention credit from the IRS is worth looking into, which could offer up to $26,000 per employee for businesses impacted between March 2020 and July of 2021.

“What this particular bit of funding is meant to help with is those employers that lost profits but keeping employees on their payroll,” said Ocean City Chamber of Commerce President Amy Thompson.

Thompson says the measure could provide substantial relief to any businesses in the resort town.

“Largely we are a service community hospitably based by large measure so really almost every place you would touch around here is affected by this,” she said.

But there is a reason, the business community says this program was overlooked compared to the more popular PPP program.

The Employee Retention Credit is not a loan, but rather a tax credit, with an intricate formula of losses, per employee per specific time frame that determines the total that businesses could stand to gain.

John Hickman of the SU Beacon Center recommends businesses contact a CPA to determine their eligibility and the extent to which they qualify, but tells 47ABC he believes the payout could be well worth the effort for businesses that had lost money while maintaining employees on the payroll.

“That’s a huge impact on any business if you had 10 employees and you get the full amount that’s 260k of tax credits for your businesses,” Hickman said adding that businesses “Do not even need to have fully closed, if they were partially open, or had to pivot to carry out or weren’t allowed a certain capacity due to government restrictions.”

Hickman also tells 47ABC that despite having employees in the name, the payments are intent for the business owners, not the employees the businesses kept on their payroll while they took the losses the program is aiming to help ease.