To our Clients and Friends:
Happy New Year, hopefully 2021 is a year of healing from the Pandemic of 2020. We recently sent a newsletter regarding the passage of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, outlining several additional relief extensions and new provisions. Those were signed into law by President Trump on December 27th. Some of you may have already received your 2nd round of $600 stimulus checks via electronic deposit. For those that have not, please visit the IRS website to check on status, but the IRS is hoping to have all the amounts dispersed prior to 1/15/2021, we shall see.
I will not go into additional details on the changes, please visit our website for the previous newsletter. There are also several articles relating to the second round of PpP, the FFCRA (extended through 3/31), and the ERTC. This bill was 5,594 pages and I am not sure Congress has read the entire bill that is now law. There will be a lot to shake out in the coming weeks, including clarifications from the SBA/Treasury on who qualifies for the second round and how the PpP program will interact with the ERTC, under the CARES Act these two programs could not be used in conjunction with one another, this bill opens the window to do so. The previous newsletter is an executive level summary into the changes, now we need clarifications. As the old saying goes, the devil is in the details. We expect a lot of clarifications, so please be patient.
This tax season will present a new challenge for both taxpayers and tax professionals. It will be a little like shooting a dart at a moving target. In the past we would have already sent tax organizers or would be sending this week. We are holding off this year until next week to see if any changes to tax law shake out from this enormous bill. With that being said, we ask clients to exercise patience through the next several months. Our entire industry has been busy since December 2019, all of 2020 was like a never ending tax season that has now bled into a new 2021 tax season. Our focus right now is to help those businesses hardest hit obtain the next round of PpP, we feel they need us the most right now. Many business & personal returns will require a higher level of review this year to ensure clients took advantage of the FFCRA (Covid related pay for employees) and the other credits they may have qualified for due to the Pandemic. Again, we ask all clients to exercise patience during the coming months, we recognize your taxes are important to you, but we may have clients that need us more in the “moment”. As always, we will do our best to take care of all our clients and provide the highest level of service possible. We expect many changes to happen in real time, much like they did on the first round of PpP.
We felt it necessary to get an update out this week to inform you of where we see things today and heading in the next several months. Tough to predict anything in these tumultuous times, but we promise to keep you informed as changes happen.
We hope everyone had a wonderful Holiday season and welcome to 2021.
