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.
Steven B. Goldman is a senior lecturer at MIT and director of the Crisis Management & Business Resiliency and Advanced Business Resiliency courses. He is also an adjunct faculty member at Harvard University, where he lectures on Crisis and Risk Communications, and directs the Radiological Emergency Management program.
Sandra Galletti is the assistant director of MIT's Crisis Management & Business Resiliency and Advanced Business Resiliency courses. She also serves as head of operations and resilience at Tidona Comunicazione in Milan, Italy.
Alexandra Mousavizadeh is the co-founder and co-CEO of Evident, an AI benchmarking intelligence platform that specializes in ranking companies on their AI adoption progress. She has 20 years experience in building indexes for nations and companies on economic and technological issues. Prior to Evident, Mousavizadeh led Tortoise Media's intelligence business, where she developed the Global AI Index. Previously, she was director of The Prosperity Index for the Legatum Institute (now the Prosperity Institute). Mousavizadeh's earlier roles include CEO of ARC Rating, senior sovereign analyst for Moody's and head of country risk management at Morgan Stanley.
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.