Small businesses that manage to get their Paycheck Protection Program loans forgiven may find themselves losing valuable tax breaks, according to new guidance from the Internal Revenue Service.
Companies that qualify for loan forgiveness under legislation Congress approved won’t be able to deduct the wages or other businesses expenses they paid for using the loan, according to an IRS notice published Thursday.
“This treatment prevents a double tax benefit,” the agency said in the notice. “This conclusion is consistent with prior guidance of the IRS.”
The guidance clarifies a point of confusion in the $670 billion small business loan program to help businesses struggling as the coronavirus has brought the economy to a standstill. The law states that the forgiven loan won’t be taxed, but didn’t specify whether companies could still write off the expenses they covered with that money.
John Samuel, who joined CGS as its global chief information officer in 2016, was promoted to executive vice president in 2018, leading the company’s digital transformation to support its future expansion plans. With more than 20 years of progressive technology operations experience, he leads the global CGS technology teams, responsible for shaping the corporate digital strategy and overseeing IT initiatives, cybersecurity and implementation of productivity and process improvement tools.
Robert Dumas is the founder and CEO of TaxConnex, which provides outsourced sales tax services. An accountant, consultant and entrepreneur, he began his public accounting career on the tax staff at Arthur Young & Co., followed by a brief stint at Grant Thornton. In 1998, he founded Tax Partners, which became the largest sales tax compliance service bureau in the country, and later sold it to Thomson Corporation. He founded TaxConnex in 2006 on the principle that the sales tax industry needed more than automation to truly help clients, thus building within TaxConnex a proprietary platform and network of sales tax experts to take sales tax off client’s plates.
GJ King is president of RIA in a Box, a firm which provides compliance and operations support to more than 1,400 RIA firms.
The tax code permits companies to write off businesses expenses, such as wages, rent and transportation expenses, but generally doesn’t allow write-offs for tax-exempt income.
The ruling adds to the list of stumbling blocks facing businesses as they try to qualify for the Paycheck Protection Program loans.
Small businesses have reported technical issues in trying to apply for the funds, which restarted Monday after the first round of funding ran out after just 13 days.
The program, run by the Small Business Administration, provides funds to cover eight weeks of payroll costs and the loans are forgiven if the employers keep workers on the job or quickly rehire laid-off workers.