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COVID Relief Money Is Still Hiding in Plain Sight: The Employee Retention Credit
Business COVID relief funds have been plentiful. We have seen it all from state and local grant programs to the Restaurant Revitalization Fund and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). The dollars have flowed freely during the past two years although some programs were certainly simpler than others. The Employee Retention Credit (ERC), unfortunately, has been the most complex and misunderstood relief program. It deserves serious consideration along with a second and third look. ERC has suffered from a branding problem, from repeated changes, and because the PPP overshadowed it. The CARES Act brought both programs to life in March 2020 , but small businesses quickly ignored the ERC in favor of the forgivable PPP loans. A taxpayer could only choose one of these programs until the December 2020 COVID relief law retroactively allowed them to coexist in the same business. But once again a second round of PPP loans overshadowed the ERC. Perhaps now with the grants awarded and PPP funds issued, the ERC can finally get the attention it deserves. The benefits are tremendous at up to $5,000 per employee in 2020 and $28,000 per employee in 2021. Opportunities abound for businesses and advisers to be on the hunt for ERC eligibility both obvious and obscure. Today, let’s review the program and cover some of the unusual ways to qualify.
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CURRENT EDITION
2025 Tax Surprises You Shouldn’t Overlook
There are a few tax rules new for 2025 that may catch some individuals and their tax advisers by surprise. These changes have not received lots of attention either because they are overshadowed by related changes that are more significant, or they were enacted a few years back with a future effective date that arrives in 2025. This article covers changes for 2025 that you will want to be sure to share with clients to avoid surprises at a later date.
Leaving the United States, Part I: Expats
When Americans speak of leaving America, they generally are expressing a desire to live elsewhere in the world for cultural reasons or due to cost of living. These people are called expatriates, aka expats. For clarity, a mere visit to another country does not make you an expat. To be an expat, the move needs to be long-term and often includes working or retiring in the new country. Expats live somewhere outside the U.S., but still have a tax obligation to the U.S. and possibly the country they move to. That will be the focus of this article.
Tax Preparer Hit with Stiff Sentence
John Anthony Castro is a colorful character. He entered several Republican primaries seeking the Presidential slot after failing to win the primary for a Senate seat representing Texas. He sued to have our once and future President Donald Trump be removed from the ballot on Fourteenth Amendment Section 3 grounds. As we can easily infer, those suits went nowhere. But more than anything, John Anthony Castro was a tax guy with a virtual practice with locations in four cities. Not anymore. Now he is resident in a Bureau of Prisons facility – the Federal Medical Center Fort Worth. On October 30, 2024, Judge Terry Means sentenced Castro to 188 months in prison, followed by one year of supervised release and restitution of $277,243, following his conviction on 33 counts of “Aiding and Assisting in the Preparation and Presentation of a False and Fraudulent Return.” Does the sad story of John Anthony Castro hold any lessons for us? Perhaps.
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