You can still qualify for an ERC refund check, even if you had a PPP or PPP-2 loan. While the CARES Act originally prohibited having both an ERC and a PPP loan, the stimulus legislation recently passed (Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021) eliminated this prohibition retroactive to March 13, 2020. Your business can now have both a PPP loan and ERC refund, however, special calculations around payroll wages and attribution is required. Stenson Tamaddon provides these calculations and all required schedules as part of a professional engagement.

There is not a necessity for a 25% reduction in revenue like PPP-2 if you can demonstrate a partial interruption in business operations. There are many ways businesses fully or partially suspend operations during each calendar quarter, and we help you document qualifying partial suspensions as part of an engagement. This includes, for example, capacity restrictions on indoor dining, canceled trade shows and group meetings, and other interruptions that are non-nominal in nature.

If your business had to change operations due to governmental orders or if gross receipts declined by 20%, your business likely qualifies. A change in operations could mean extra cleaning or sanitizing, limiting capacity or reducing hours, installing/utilizing protective equipment, temperature checks, or operational impact related to key suppliers or customers. For example, a law firm may have no longer been able to do in-person court hearings or in-person depositions, and cases may have been delayed, even if the firm continued to operate.

A partial suspension of operations can take many forms. Here are some common examples we see in businesses like yours:

• unable to attend trade shows in-person (“travel or group meetings”)
• had staff go from in-office to work-from-home and had an impact
• retail or restaurant that reduced the number of customers allowed inside
• closed down a department or business unit while other units continued to operate

There are many ways businesses fully or partially suspend operations during each calendar quarter, and we help you document this as part of an engagement.

Our Experts usually take 1-2 weeks to process your payroll, reconcile any PPP covered period overlap, and build out the attribution schedules. We will then file your forms with the IRS who will take between 8-12 weeks to process your tax credit and send you a check.

After processing thousands of PPP forgiveness applications and ERC credits we have perfected our process to ensure your time is well spent and kept at a minimum. Our ERC process only requires a short 15-minute call with you to review expectations, confirm our questionnaire responses and pull down payroll reports.