Blog

Effective January 1 of this year Dave Miniken, Sweeney Conrad Shareholder and Director of our Client Accounting Services department,  became the Board Chair of the Bellevue Downtown Association (BDA). We sat down with Dave to find out a bit more about his BDA involvement.

Recently, President Trump signed the second COVID-19 stimulus bill, which includes some rather special benefits for small businesses (i.e., companies with 100 employees or less). The new bill allows for both retroactive and prospective changes to the Employee Retention Credit (ERC). It is now possible for businesses that received a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan in 2020 to potentially also benefit from the ERC. You may recall, prior to these changes, a business could either get a PPP loan or take the ERC. They could not have both. In addition, the new bill extends the ERC period to cover the first two quarters of 2021. The extended period now covers wages from January 1, 2021 to June 30, 2021. The rules for the 2021 credit are significantly different and could provide opportunities for employers that did not previously qualify for the ERC.

Congress has passed new COVID relief including stimulus payments and tax relief.  The bill awaits the President’s signature, which is expected shortly.  We’re providing some highlights here, but details of many of these provisions are not yet known since the bill is over 5,500 pages in length and will take time to digest. 

The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in financial upheaval for a number of businesses that sponsor an employee retirement plan. As a result, some of them have taken a fresh look at their plan design to see if there are any changes that could help them better weather the financial storm.

As an employee benefit plan sponsor, you are required to complete a variety of ERISA compliance tasks throughout the year. Your third-party administrator may be engaged to handle some of the tasks for the plan. Here are the 2021 plan year deadlines for some of the most common ERISA compliance tasks:

Gov. Jay Inslee announced another round of Small Business grants this week. The maximum grant is $20,000 and is reserved for small businesses with annual revenues of $5 million or less, and businesses most impacted by the health measures, i.e full-service restaurants, fitness centers, bowling alleys and music and event venues.

Last month, the Associated Press called the presidential election for former Vice President Joe Biden. The House of Representatives will remain under Democratic control, but control of the Senate is still uncertain until early January 2021.

It’s no secret that the pandemic has changed the landscape of the working world. With so many employees telecommuting, the requirements around income tax in some states is being effected. In fact, in many states, having just one telecommuting employee can create Nexus.

Since the coronavirus pandemic began, many businesses have been forced to lay off and furlough employees in an effort to bring their workforce in line with reduced demand for products and services. Such downsizing can result in an unintended consequence that affects a business’ qualified retirement plan known as a partial plan termination.

On November 18^th, the IRS issued additional guidance regarding deductibility of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan related expenses and the news is not what we had hoped for. The guidance came in the form of Revenue Ruling 2020-27 and Revenue Procedure 2020-51.