Get updated on PPP, Sick Pay, FMLA, PPE and everything else you might need to know for your dental practice! Mike Bark and Meagan Rutkowski are here to walk you through the updates that have been going on, including where things might be headed - especially with the upcoming election.
Payment Protection Program (PPP)
The banks are going to be sending you things and wanting you to apply for forgiveness because they want these loans off their books. It used to be that the forgiveness needed to be applied after your eight week period. That got pushed back to 24 weeks. So, you now have 10 months after the 24 week period ends to apply for forgiveness, which pushes us next May-June. As we've talked about, the one big reason is we don't know if the deductions related to the PPP grant income that you receive will be deductible. We're kind of waiting for Congress to act on that because it wasn't consistent with what the original intent was. So once you receive the forgiveness grant, that income is technically taxable right now.
PPE/HHS Grants
These grants are being made to help you purchase protective equipment for your dental practice. You can also make necessary modifications to your office and these are meant to help defray some of those costs. One of the things in the law is, initially, it was just for Medicare and Medicaid providers. So then they blew it out to more and more providers and that's where most of you within the healthcare industry got your 2% of your revenues as an HHS grant. That is now being expanded to even more health care providers. So in the last round, it opened it up to people who are non-Medicare non-Medicaid providers, but now it's opened it up to different professions like psychiatrists and psychologists. You can also apply again to receive these funds if you either did not get them or if you can provide enough substantial financial need, in order to get an additional fund. It's expected that these particular grants may be funded toward the end of the year, we don't expect a whole lot of our clients to get this one as they've already received their 2% grant. But again, it probably does not hurt to apply to get it even though it will be tough to get.
What constitutes sick pay or FMLA pay?
This applies to employers who have under 500 employees, which is all of our clients. There was an exemption you can apply for although we haven't seen that in dental practice, so you should work on the assumption this applies to you. So the first way this would apply is if you have an employee who is either following a federal-state-local quarantine, stay-at-home order or is quarantined by a healthcare provider, and I think that even applies to if you are waiting for the results of a test or you are told to stay home because you think you have symptoms. So in that case, you get up to two weeks or 80 hours of paid sick leave at your regular pay rate. On the employer side, you pay that out and then you're going to get a payroll tax credit when you file your next quarterly payroll tax return for those hours that you paid out because of this act. For part-time employees, it's based on an average. The employee has to be an employee for at least 30 days to be able to qualify for any of these benefits. And then they look back at the last year that the person has worked.
And so much more…
To get the latest news and updates or if you want to talk with Bull Moose visit http://www.bullmoosefinancial.com or call (414) 759-9629.
