Empower-U-Consulting is dedicated to help your business determine if you are eligible for the Employee Retention Tax Credit

What is the ERC?

The Employee Retention Credit (ERC) was developed to encourage and support employers who retained existing employees throughout 2020 and for the first three quarters of 2021 by offering a generous payroll tax refund through the IRS.

As a small to medium-sized business, it’s likely that you were negatively impacted by COVID-19, and you certainly weren’t alone.

Due to financial suffering across the country, Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act to help get businesses back on their feet — with a special section called the Employee Retention Credit (ERC), specifically added to help businesses like yours.

Eligible businesses can receive a refund of up to $5,000 per employee for all of 2020 and up to $7,000 per employee kept on the payroll for each quarter for Q1 through Q3 of 2021. That’s a total refund of up to $26,000 per employee kept on your payroll.

How to Qualify

The ERC has gone through significant updates, so even if you or your tax advisor have reviewed this credit before, we encourage you to take another look with one of our specialists. Unfortunately, the program is not yet living up to its full potential because many business owners are prematurely disqualifying themselves due to misinformation and rumors about who does or doesn’t qualify. The overarching theme for businesses to focus on is how the coronavirus pandemic impacted our economy as a whole… so even if your business grew or was deemed an essential business during the pandemic, there are more qualifying factors to look at before you disqualify yourself. This payroll tax credit is available to essential and non-essential businesses in any industry that endured the effects of the pandemic. Government orders—on federal, state, and local levels—are a major factor that many business owners had to adapt to over the last year and a half.

Examples of affected businesses include a restaurant that could not let customers dine indoors or a manufacturer that had to slow their operations due to new health and safety restrictions.

• Full shutdowns;

• Partial shutdowns;

• Interrupted operations;

• Supply chain interruptions;

• Inability to access equipment;

• Limited capacity to operate;

• Inability to work with your vendors;

• Reduction in services or goods offered to your customers;

• Cut down on your hours of operation;

• Shifting hours to increase sanitation of your facility

If any of the above were an impact on your business, there is a high chance that you may qualify of the ERC credit. Empower-U-Consulting has helped our clients find millions of dollars in tax credits and we would love to help you.