US Politics and Economics - They CARES a Lot!

Well, I'm not any less confused than before. I clicked through, created my account, and it said I was approved for a loan of $X, an amount quite a bit larger than the $10K EIDL grant amount. Do I have to take out the loan to get the 10K? Is the 10K EIDL money separate from the loan money, or is the first 10K of the PPP loan considered the EIDL grant? There are mechanisms for having the loan forgiven, yes? I confess I'm asking all this here instead of RTFMing because sarahell's posts are clear and the government is opaque.

PPP is separate from EIDL.

Basically, this email is for the "full loan" for which the $10k (had you actually received it) would have been the advance. You can choose a smaller amount to receive as a loan, and not take the full amount. As far as I'm aware, this loan is not eligible for forgiveness but the interest rate is low and you have a long time to repay it.

I guess I should contact someone to see if the EIDL application is still pending or has been declined.

That is your EIDL

yeah it sounds like a lot like the eidl i got. i was declined for a ppp but received the eidl a few weeks ago. qualified because i was doing contract work last year. my new job has been put off for a month pending budget approval so if i don't end up getting that at least i have several months to figure out what the hell i'm gonna do.

We received the grant/advance weeks before the loan, I don't know how it works now that they're getting to more applications. Also the grant was only $1k for single-person businesses for a long while, don't know if that actually changed back to the $10k or not.

The $1k-$10k grant reduces the amount of PPP forgiveness but other than that the two programs are entirely separate.

it didn't change back to the $10k -- they changed it to $1k per employee up to $10k max -- (my org had 2 employees so we got $2k).

I think I got bait-and-switched? I started looking for the mechanisms for getting part or all of this loan forgiven. I thought I was getting a 7(a) loan which is partially or fully forgiveable, and it looks like I got a 7(b) loan which doesn't have any provision for forgiveness... so confused.

The PPP is potentially forgivable.
The grant portion of the EIDL is a grant so forgiveness is irrelevant (but there's interaction with the PPP forgiveness), the rest is not.

Yeah ... the EIDL main loan -- the one with the disastercustomerservice email -- is not forgiveable (at the moment, who the fuck knows what will get changed in the next month or so ... it is a mess), but the terms are very good and the interest rate is quite low. If your alternative was something like "putting everything on credit cards" then you are way better off with the EIDL.

Honestly, I suspect that the gov't will do something like forgive all the loans around say, October, as a ploy to get votes in the election.

yeah also to help distract from the blatant corporate thievery that went on at the same time... "we forgave all of you, it was a hard time for everyone. stop picking on the big guy!"

is it thievery if there is a sign that says "take one" on the purportedly stolen property?

Yeah, I'm not too worried about paying this 10K back, looks like a 30 year term and a pretty small payment. But I had been reading about loans that had full or partial forgiveness and a 1% APR built into the PR blitz, and this is definitely not that.

They made some really messy and stupid tax laws that now have to be reported on forms for tax purposes!!!

Also, there are new PPP loans and a performing arts bailout, kinda

also the EIDL doesn't have to be deducted from the PPP for forgiveness purposes

2nd round PPP seems to be going a lot more smoothly than round 1 ... though idk if first time applicants are having less trouble than those who applied in round 1. They aren't requiring you to have started the round 1 forgiveness process in order to qualify for a second draw.

Next up (unless Congress/Biden enact some other OMG ASAP major program) is the Rental Assistance Program, which isn't perfect by any means, but should definitely help folx out who have months of back rent and are freaking out about possibly having to pay it.

Emergency Rental Assistance Program -- federal guidelines --how you can get the government to pay your back rent to your landlord

https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/ERA-Frequently-Asked-Questions_Pub-2-22-21.pdf

The non-taxable $10k in benefits offsets ~$1k for most people so the bill wound up a couple of thousand worse for most people using UI

this is assuming that everyone getting UI benefits is only in the 10% tax bracket. ... which isn't true. Far from true. There are several other key things at play tax-wise:

1. people getting Obamacare subsidies -- prior to this legislation, the UI benefits counted towards income (means testing) whether one has to potentially repay subsidized health insurance.

2. non-taxability of forgiven PPP loans -- imagine you are a self-employed person whose income dried up because of Covid, but with the new federal benefits, you could actually collect unemployment (for potentially the first time ever) -- so, rather than try and navigate the convoluted banking system of PPP loans with regulations and requirements that weren't terribly user friendly, plus all the news stories about how Cheesecake Factory took all the PPP money -- you figure that getting unemployment rather than a PPP loan to cover your lost income is the best choice for you. ... So back in December, the government decides that the people that got PPP money don't have to pay tax on it ... but you have to pay tax on your unemployment benefits? ... Not really fair.

sorry i am using this thread to respond to posts in the politics thread after the fact because I don't want to be the annoying person bringing shit up from yesterday because I can't keep up with the pace of the thread

This is good! I'm a person who was on UI all of 2020 and also got insurance through the exchange for the first time ever, and my bf got a PPP loan through one of his LLCs and also got insurance so a lot of this is helpful.

thank you!

My accountant/tax person patiently walked me through what I'd done wrong in getting an SBA disaster loan instead of a PPP loan, and steered me the right way for the latter. Funds arrived this morning, w00t. It was the very end of round 1; I don't know if I'll go for another loan in round 2.

to be fair, you applied for a disaster loan at the very beginning, when the PPP loans were still being developed and there was a delay having application forms for self-employed people with no employees. At the time, you either could have done the disaster loan .... or waited ... so, you shouldn't feel like you did something wrong initially.