US Politics and Economics - They CARES a Lot!

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.