I get a great deal of value from my annual membership with the National Society of Accountants for Cooperatives, and one of the most valuable benefits is free access to their Cooperative Learning Network — “webinars that provide easy access to presentations, panel discussions and conversations by leading experts and fellow members on a variety of topics and issues important to those in the cooperative world”. (I would argue that any small business consultant will get great value from these — not just those who work with co-ops.) However, you can take these classes as a non-member as well, for a small fee (usually $56), which includes CPE credit. They are usually well worth it, as there are some topics that they cover, such as small business fraud and preparing for a third-party audit, that no other accounting/bookkeeping membership organization seems to do quite as well.
I mention this because they have a great line-up of CLNs in the next few months and I wanted to highlight some of them:
For those out there considering expanding your scope to include cooperatives, I strongly encourage it, as there are simply not enough co-op bookkeepers and accountants out there to fill the need; cooperatives are one of the fastest-growing segments of the small business population and we need your help to keep them on solid financial footing. NSAC offers Basic and Advanced Cooperative Accounting Seminars — training in the core concepts unique to working for or with cooperatives such as equity management, tax planning and risk management.
I’ll be attending all three of the above webinars and hope to “see” you there!
If this or any other posts on the website were useful to you, and your financial situation permits it, please consider contributing to my tip jar. Ths allows me to continue to provide free accounting resources to small businesses who do not have the funds available to hire a CPA.
Note: this is an update to an existing blog post — the instructions below are specific to the Biz2Credit PPP lending platform. If you received your loan through another platform, please see my original post.
For over a year we waited for legislation from Congress as well as guidance from both the SBA and IRS as to the interplay between the Employee Retention Credit (ERC) and the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). It appears the last of that guidance was issued on August 10, 2021 — so, at this point, as long as you have worked out the interplay between PPP and the Employee Retention Credit (ERC), then you should go ahead and apply. Which means that if you are a sole proprietor and have no employees, you are ready to apply — since ERC is only an issue if you have W-2 employees or are a W-2 employee of your own company.
For PPP draws in 2021, our firm participated in a joint program by AICPA and Biz2Credit called the “CPA Loan Portal”. We’ve prepared the following step-by-step instructions for clients of ours who were funded through this system — however, I believe the instructions are the same for small business owners who applied directly with Biz2Credit. (Let us know in the comments if this is the case or if you had to tweak the approach at all.)
First, a couple general comments for borrowers of $150k or less who are self-employed with no employees:
For self-employed with no employees, it’s an “owner compensation replacement” approach, which means you will have 2.5 months’ worth of your prior-year net profit (or gross profit, for those who applied for PPP funding under the last-minute changes to the rules) automatically forgiven. Your forgiveness amount should exactly equal your loan amount, presuming the original loan was calculated properly.
According to Biz2Credit on their July 1 webinar (from their PPP Forgiveness Required Documents Customer Guidebook), no documentation is required for sole proprietors with loans of $150k or less:
How-To Instructions for PPP Forgiveness – AICPA Biz2Credit Application – Self-Employed with No Employees
First things first, decide whether you’d like to fill out the forgiveness application yourself or whether you’d like your CPA firm to do it for you for a small fee. Once you’ve informed them that you’d like to DIY, they will need to “assign” the forgiveness application to you, which will trigger an email that looks something like this:
Once you log in to your account using the credentials you created when you signed the PPP draw application just before getting funded, you’ll be walked through a series of screens.
Click the “Apply for Loan Forgiveness” button.
Most of the information will be automatically filled in based on the initial loan application information. There is no need to enter information in any of the fields marked “(Optional)”. Click the “Confirm” button.
A pop-up should suggest you use the 3508-S application, the simplest one – click the Continue button to go to the Basic PPP Loan Information screen.
Covered Period Start Date should default to the disbursement date as the start date. The duration of the covered period can be anywhere from 8-to-24 weeks; if the applicant is self-employed with no employees, we suggest a 10-week period. The end-date will auto-fill.
Most of the information will fill in automatically, but you will have to note the number of employees at the time of the forgiveness application – for self-employed with no employees, the answer is 1.
For a self-employed person with no employees, the Amount of Loan Spent on Payroll Costs should be the full amount of the PPP loan.
Click the green “Next” button on the lower-right corner to continue.
A pop-up will come up – read and click “Accept & Continue” if you agree.
You should get a screen confirming the form was completed and letting you know they have sent an email with a link to Docusign the application. Do not click the “Continue” button until you sign the application. Open your email program in a separate tab to find the email from Biz2Credit Contract Support via Docusign, with the subject, “Biz2Credit : PPP Loan Forgiveness Application Form 3508S”. Keep in mind that it may be in the “Promotions” or “Updates” tab, or in Spam.
Click the orange “Review Document” button in the email.
The Docusign document should open in a separate tab – you may need to allow it to access your location.
Checkmark the agreement and click “Continue”.
Click the “Start” button and follow the guidelines to initial twice and then sign the form. Click the “Finish” button when you are done. Save a copy for your own records.
Go back to the Biz2Credit tab and click “Continue” (if you accidentally closed the tab, please go to the Biz2Credit site and log in again). It is essential that you click the “Continue” button to submit the application.
Click “Ok” on the pop-up. This will take you back to the dashboard – at the bottom, instead of the “Apply for Loan Forgiveness” button, you should see two links: View Submission and View Documents. There is no need to click on these at this point, but seeing them is reassurance that your application has in fact been submitted.
(If you did not download the form after Docusigning, then you can do it at this point, by clicking “View Documents”. It will then take you to a screen with a long list of possible documents – the top link (“E-signed 3508”) allows you to download a pdf of the e-signed document for your records.)
You will receive two more emails from Biz2Credit: 1) an email via Docusign allowing you to view or download the completed document (which at this point you’ve already done); and, 2) a confirmation that your loan forgiveness application is being sent to the SBA.
Now sit tight and await a confirmation email from Biz2Credit once the SBA has forgiven the loan – please make sure to forward this to your CPA firm… and congratulations!
Note: Even though no documentation for loans under $150k is required, occasionally there will be a follow-up email from Biz2Credit requesting certain items. Please forward to your CPA firm if this occurs and they will advise (and they’ll inform your Biz2Credit lending rep that this step should not be required).
For self-employed folks with no employees, the PPP Forgiveness process is very straightforward. Please let us know in the comments if you come across challenges, so others can learn from your experiences — especially for those who applied directly with Biz2Credit instead of through your CPA. Best of luck to you all!
If this or any other posts on the website were useful to you, and your financial situation permits it, please consider contributing to my tip jar. Ths allows me to continue to provide free accounting resources to small businesses who do not have the funds available to hire a CPA.
According to a report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, the Covid pandemic caused a backlog of almost 8 million paper-filed business tax returns at the end of 2020. The IRS continues to have difficulty hiring enough staff to continue processing tax-year 2020 returns — the agency had only met 63% of its recruitment goal for processing operations as of July, NBC reports.
In today’s AICPA Town Hall — a special edition focused on tax issues — Melanie Lauridsen, Senior Manager of Tax Policy & Advocacy, drove home the point of how the inability of the IRS to fully process this backlog, answer the phones, or handle incoming snail mail in a timely manner is affecting taxpayers and their preparers. A case in point was the answer-rate of the phone lines — they are overwhelmed with substantially more calls than in the past, and only able to answer 2-8% of calls.
This has motivated the AICPA to introduce penalty relief recommendations to Congressional leaders. Underpayment and late penalty relief for 2020, as well as holding off on compliance adjustments and issuing account holds until all snail mail is processed and payments by check can be applied to accounts, would significantly reduce the number of calls to the IRS to resolve these issues (many of which are only a matter of correspondence crossing in the mail). By reducing the number of calls, we would be helping the IRS increase the rate at which they can answer existing calls.
If you’re having challenges and want to help raise awareness to the situation at the IRS and promote penalty relief as one part of the solution, you can go to social media and: • Share stories of pandemic-related hardships • Tag members of Congress, media and gov’t officials on social media posts • Include hashtag #COVIDPenaltyRelief in all social media posts • Tag AICPA on your posts: – Twitter: @AICPA – Facebook: @AICPA – LinkedIn: @AICPA – Instagram: @theaicpa • Find your rep: https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative Members of Congress Twitter handles: https://twitter.com/i/lists/34179516/members IRS Social Media: @IRS • Share story or template post: The pandemic has caused a lot of personal and economic suffering in our country. Taxpayers need relief from tax penalties now – we ask the @IRS to grant penalty relief. #COVIDPenaltyRelief @AICPA @[mediaoutlet] @[member of Congress
Thank you in advance for helping raise awareness to a situation that is causing serious hardship for many thousands of Americans.
If this or any other posts on the website were useful to you, and your financial situation permits it, please consider contributing to my tip jar. Ths allows me to continue to provide free accounting resources to small businesses who do not have the funds available to hire a CPA.
