President Donald Trump is expected to sign into law the Paycheck Protection Program Flexibility Act.
Our firm is currently reviewing the Act in detail to fully understand the impact and what this means to your PPP loan and forgiveness. We will be in touch once we have reviewed these changes further.
The bill extends certain provisions of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) to provide small businesses with relief in the time frame and use of their PPP loan funds. The passage of the Act into law would change a large part of the existing forgiveness guidance, and would require a new Loan Forgiveness Application. The main aspects changed, which would be brought about by this bill, are listed below.
- Loan Maturity Extension to 5 years
- Extension of the Paycheck Protection Program Itself
- Extension of the “Forgiveness” Covered Period from 8 weeks to 24 weeks, with also allowing borrowers to elect to use the original 8 week period
- Extension of the Safe Harbor Deadlines for the FTE Reduction and Salary/Hourly Wage Reduction
- Provides exemptions to the FTE Reduction based on Employee Availability
- Changes the Payroll Cost 75% Requirement to 60%
- Changes to the Other Cost 25% Requirement to 40%
- Extension of the Deferral Period
- Deadline for Forgiveness
- Borrowers who Obtain PPP Loan Forgiveness are Now Allowed to Delay Payment of Employer Payroll Taxes
These changes should add much needed flexibility to the approach to use of those funds and the general sentiment in early news is that it will also help in borrower forgiveness.