Moore Financial Tips for Trying Times

Cobb County Government is partnering with SelectCobb to offer the county’s small businesses a funding opportunity to help mitigate financial hardships created by the coronavirus pandemic. The SelectCobb Small Business Relief Grants will provide up to $20,000-$40,000 grants for small businesses based in Cobb County to use on personnel, rent, utilities, and acquiring PPE to ensure the safety of their employees. Applications will open on June 8, 2020 at 10:00 a.m. and close on June 26, 2020 at 5:00 p.m. A full list of eligibility requirements and more information about the application process will be available at www.selectcobb.com on June 1. The website and email address for this program—www.selectcobb.com/grants and grants@selectcobb.com—will be available on June 1. Also, a webinar on how to apply for the small business grants will be held on June 10th at 10:00 am through the Cobb Chamber. Grant funding will be available in three different tiers based upon the number of full-time, W-2...

CNBC Published Thu, May 28 20201:14 PM EDT  Updated Thu, May 28 2020 5:55 PM Jacob Pramuck The House passed a bill Thursday designed to give small businesses owners more flexibility in how they spend money from a key coronavirus aid program. The chamber approved the legislation in a nearly unanimous 417-1 vote. The Senate has put forward a plan similar to the House bill, but has not yet passed it. Senators will not convene again until next week. The Paycheck Protection Program, one of the core parts of the $2 trillion pandemic rescue package passed in March, includes standards for how companies have to use their loans in order to get them forgiven. The measure passed Thursday would ease those rules. The plan would: Reduce the share of aid money small business are required to spend on payroll from 75% to 60% (the PPP’s architects aimed to encourage companies to keep workers employed) Extend the window businesses have to use the funds from two months to six months Push back a June 30...

Additional rules about the Payroll Protection spending were released on Friday. The following article is a readable analysis of the changes. One of the most significant changes limits the amount of salary the owner of an S corporation can pay themselves.  Also discussed are tips, how to account for employees who have resigned or don't want to come back to work, and how to count full time equivalent employees. Forbes May 23, 2020, 05:57pm EDT Alan Gassman, Contributor May 22 PPP Final Interim Rules Provide Further Guidance And Some Surprises Last Friday night the SBA gave new weekend plans to those of us who advise borrowers and banks on how to plan for and understand the PPP loan forgiveness rules and process. The new Interim Final Rules consist of 26 pages that build upon what we learned from the Loan Forgiveness Application and Instructions, which cleared up several items, and resulted in several questions, and now some have been answered. A second set of Interim Final Rules, al...

Did you know the US Postal Service electronically tracks your incoming mail? You can see digital scans of what has been mailed to you using their new free service called Informed Delivery. The following is an excerpt of the full article about stimulus check tracking. Forbes May 24, 2020, 08:30am EDT Zack Friedman, Contributor Track your stimulus check through the the Post Office The U.S. Post Office now offers a free service to track your stimulus check. It’s called Informed Delivery , and allows you to digitally preview your mail. How does Informed Delivery work? You sign up for free. This is an automated service and you can cancel anytime. There is a free app on Android and iPhone. The U.S. Post Office takes digital images of all your incoming mail, so you can preview your mail and know when it will arrive. Once your stimulus check has been mailed, the post office will take an image of the envelope containing your stimulus check payment. You will receive an email or can access an on...

Bench May 19, 2020 By Owen Yin The Paycheck Protection Program loan can be completely forgiven if you spend it on the right things, and if you prove those expenses. However, PPP forgiveness works differently for sole proprietors and independent contractors, the biggest difference being the concept of “owner compensation replacement” which greatly simplifies the loan forgiveness process. Here’s everything you need to know. How sole proprietor PPP loans are calculated Generally, the PPP loan amount that businesses qualify for is based on their average payroll expenses. However, since sole props and contractors usually don’t have payroll, their loan is based on 2019 net profit divided by 12, to get a monthly “average” net profit. This number times 2.5 equals your PPP loan amount. Which means your PPP loan is roughly ten weeks worth of net profit. Now, how do you get that amount forgiven, since you don’t have payroll to spend it on? Owner compensation replacement Instead of spending your ...

Although this article is about New Jersey unemployment rules, these issues are fairly consistent from state to state. NJ.com Posted May 22, 9:29 AM By Karin Price Mueller NJ Advance Media About 1.1 million New Jerseyans have applied for unemployment benefits since the coronavirus outbreak shut down the state. Workers have been laid off, furloughed and their hours have been cut. Some have lost their jobs permanently. The lucky ones have been offered some kind of severance package. So if you’ve lost your job for good because of the virus but you have a severance package, are you eligible for unemployment benefits? It depends, and it’s very specific. The Labor Department’s website says there are several kinds of payments workers may receive from a former employer, and these are treated differently. It says “severance pay,” if paid within the context of contractual obligation or by custom, is a taxable fringe benefit under Administrative Code 12:16-4.3. “It is subject to state unemployment...

Here are answers to some of questions we've been asked.  It's a random list from the latest guidance, as we understand them today. Full Time Equivalent Employee Calculations When calculating your full time equivalent employees (FTEE's), use 40 hour weeks for the full time amount.  There has been confusion about how to equate part time employees with full time employees, and some have suggested considering 30 hours as full time.  Although 30 hours is the standard in the health insurance rules, for the PPP loans, 40 hours is the full time amount. If an employee works less than 40 hours per week, they can simply be considered to be 0.5 of a full time employee.  If they work overtime beyond 40 hours per week, they are still 1.0 full time employee.  This approach can be used to simplify the conversion math. Advance Forgiveness - Meaning the Advance Has to Be Paid Back If you received the EIDL assistance grant of $1,000 per employee, it will be forgiven, as long as yo...

CNBC make It Published Tuesday, May 19 20204:54 PM EDT By Courtney Connley To help women and minority business owners stay afloat during and after the pandemic, several organizations and leaders have stepped up to create their own Covid-19 financial relief funds. CNBC Make It compiled a list of nine programs that are allocating grants for small businesses, some of which include mentorship opportunities as well. The CNBC article lists nine groups that are making low interest loans and grants, and includes the loan application sites. We are aware that Sara Blakely of Spanx is funding locally, so check out the list.  It's real. Link to the article here .

I f your business received the EIDL advance funds of up to $10,000, you will receive an email from the Small Business Administration giving you more information to apply for the 30 year EIDL loan at 3.75%. The SBA email message looks like a loan pre-approval. The loans have flexibility in the way they can be spent, and the monthly repayment amounts are small. The following is an excerpt from the article. Here is the link to the full article, which seriously matters. Forbes May 20, 2020,12:14pm EDT Brian Thompson, Contributor SBA Approving Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDLs): What You Need To Know Small businesses applied for Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) in droves when they became available on March 30th. Normally, these loans only provide assistance after natural disasters like tornadoes, wildfires or floods, but when President Trump declared Covid-19 a nationwide emergency on March 13th, the door opened for small businesses across the country to seek emergency financi...

The Wall Street Journal Published: May 17, 2020 at 5:02 p.m. ET By Yuka Hayashi Changes likely to give small businesses more flexibility WASHINGTON — Lawmakers and government officials are preparing to make significant changes to the Paycheck Protection Program, amid cooling demand for government-backed loans and criticism from business owners who say they can’t tap the funds. The changes are likely to include giving businesses more flexibility to spend the money, according to lawmakers and others following the deliberations. Under the original terms, 75% of the funds were required to be spent on employee salaries for the loans to be forgiven. The government also is expected to extend the time to spend the loan money beyond the two months it originally set. Both changes follow complaints from restaurants, hair salons and others who say they can’t hire back staff while they are closed during the coronavirus pandemic and need more money to cover their overhead costs. “When we conceived...

Tony Nitti, one of the country's best financial writers, published an instructional article yesterday for Forbes . It walks through the Paycheck Protection Program loan forgiveness application step by step, and the article includes explanatory examples along the way.  If you received a PPP loan, you will want to keep this as a reference. The link to the full article is at the bottom of the post. SBA Releases Paycheck Protection Program Loan Forgiveness Application: A Deep Dive Forbes May 16, 2020 1:59pm EDT Tony Nitti , Senior Contributor On Friday, May 15th, the Small Business Administration (SBA) released the application borrowers of a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan must use to determine the amount of the loan that may be “forgiven” by their lender. While the application included instruction, the SBA failed to provide two additional items that would have greatly benefited borrowers: 1. Narrative-based guidance, similar to previously issued interim final rules, which i...

The Small Business Administration released the application for forgiveness of the Paycheck Protection Program loan.  As everyone knows, the 8-week time period to spend the money starts on the day the PPP funds are deposited into the business bank account.  When the 8 weeks end, the business has 4 weeks to complete the loan forgiveness application and submit it, along with detailed documentation of expenses, to the bank. The application and instructions are 11 pages.  We're including links to the application and to a short article about the application. Paycheck Protection Program Loan Forgiveness Application SBA releases coronavirus PPP loan forgiveness application We haven't yet had a chance to go through the application, so won't be able to answer questions until early next week.

Does Working from Home Change Your Tax Situation? We Asked the Experts by Brittany Anas Apartment Therapy May 13, 2020 For those thrust into work-from-home routines, kitchen tables are now doubling as work desks, living rooms are makeshift conference rooms for Zoom calls and, ultimately, work-life balance is blurry. So, in the search for a silver lining, you might concede: “Well, at least I can write off a home office on my taxes.” Unfortunately, you’re going to need to file this under “Things that are not fair in 2020.” Unless you’re self-employed, you don’t qualify for home office deductions—not even if your regular office is shut down to non-essential workers during the coronavirus pandemic, forcing you to work from home. If you quickly converted a spare room into a bonafide office and spent money on an ergonomic chair and other office furnishings, it still doesn’t count. “Sadly, since tax reform, the home office deduction is now only available to those who are self-employed,” says...

By Rishi Iyengar, CNN Business Updated 6:25 AM ET, Wed May 13, 2020 San Francisco (CNN Business)The age of remote work is upon us. More companies around the world are letting employees work from home , with many making the shift in a matter of days and some announcing plans to keep the policy going for the rest of the year -- or even indefinitely . But while working remotely can provide more flexibility and spare people a long commute, it could also come with a notable risk: leaving workers -- and by extension their companies -- more vulnerable to cyberattacks without the added security of an office network. Experts say they have seen a surge in "phishing" attacks targeted at people working from home, where clicking on a link in an email or message could lead to installing malware on your device. "The employee gets phished, that becomes the access point to have the network compromised," said Kiersten Todt, a former cybersecurity official in the Obama administrati...

The Hill By Juliegrace Brufke - 05/11/20 08:07 PM EDT Reps. Dean Phillips (D-Minn) and Chip Roy (R-Texas) introduced bipartisan legislation Monday that would make changes to the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) aimed at providing additional help to employers trying to weather the financial fallout caused by the coronavirus crisis. The PPP was authorized in legislation earlier this year to provide forgivable loans to struggling small businesses. But the lawmakers say more needs to be done to help employers stay afloat and that changes to the program could make a substantial difference. The measure, titled the Paycheck Protection Flexibility Act, includes language that would extend PPP loan forgiveness for expenses beyond the eight weeks allotted under current policy in hopes that businesses will be able to keep more of their workers on the payroll. It would also allow businesses to utilize more than 25 percent of the loan for purposes that extend beyond payroll and allow the term of...