Did any of you small business owners apply for this? We had a falling out with our in-house accountant, but today we received a substantial check from the Treasury and can't figure out what it's for. My partner claims he told the accountant to apply for it before she left, and she claims she did, but we have no record.

The check says "F-941" so it has something to do with payroll taxes, but my new accountant preliminarily thinks it's just overpayment of payroll taxes and not the employee retention credit (he wasn't real familiar with the program so I think he may be wrong).

Have any of you received a refund? If so, was there any kind of notation on the check indicating what it was for?

I've done many for my clients. Do you use a full service payroll company? That would be my first call. Even so - your accountant could have amended without involvement from the payroll company. I do recall seeing 941x and the yr/qtr on the checks from the irs - I do not recall the ERC being called out specifically. An ERC is likely to be much more substantial than an overpayment calculation.

Does the check list a year and quarter? Eligible employers were getting payments starting at some time in 2020 through q3 21 (depending on PPP generally). Do you meet the eligibility requirements? I have seen some VERY liberal interpretations of the rules. Also saw my first audit letter last week…

Thank you sir, this is very helpful. The check at the bottom says "OGDEN 12/2021 F-941 REF 01"

Have you made any changes to your tax ID, payroll company, filed late or duplicate 941s or had any other outside of usual payroll situations?

That's an ERC check. We're still waiting on 1.7M from refiled 941s but I just looked back at the check we got from Q1 21 and it reads identical at the bottom.

Damn, that's awesome! I appreciate all of the great advice!

Wait, so do you just get one or do they come every quarter?

Not certain but our situation probably drove how we'll receive the funds...and ultimately I'm going to guess quarterly.

Q1 21 was different than the rest of the year. We had an overlapping PPP loan in Q2 and we had to wait to get that finalized before we were able to complete the 941x for the overlapping quarters.

You can't double dip qualifying payroll for ERC and PPP which is why we had to wait to see what qualifying payroll expense was left after considering PPP forgiveness.

So it turns out it wasn't an ERC refund. The IRS was late in filing our last 941 and sent us the money for some reason. We're going to have to send it back at some point.

And it looks like the only quarter we'd be eligible for an ERC refund would be Q4 in 2021. But now I'm seeing that it got repealed and now Q4 only applies to new start up businesses.

So once again, I guess we are going to get shafted. I appreciate all of y'all's help though.

Bump for an update on this.

Anyone else apply for the ERC credit? Anyone receive one? Anyone applied but then denied by IRS?

I just filled out the forms with a firm but have not submitted yet. Curious to hear from others.

Yes, I do this for clients. Once you submit docs they are pretty quick to tell you if you qualify. Getting the money can take a few months.

For anyone that owns a business that would like help drop your email below

what is the minimum#of employees required to be elgible.read and heard different things

I've seen so much conflicting info on this that when combined with the aggressive auditing the IRS is now warning companies about given all the shady third party filing companies that have absolutely blasted my mailbox the last two years, I just said forget it, not worth it.

I don't think we are leaving much on the table given I didn't know to scale back the wages applied towards the ppp forgiveness by the allowed 40% or whatever allowable non payroll percentage, and I've read you can't amend your SBA forgiveness application either. Plus we only had a short shutdown and real losses in q2 of 20 that I don't even think we're 50% down but more like 45, so may not qualify for anything.

I don't think congress/IRS could have made this program more confusing if they tried, and there is limited good info out there that isn't a company trying to sell you filing services that apparently are highly likely to put you directly in the IRS crosshairs for way over calculating your refund.

We ended up retaining Experian to do the ERC amendments for us in exchange for 10% of what is recovered. They indemnify and hold you harmless for any decisions they make on your behalf, so if the IRS comes a callin' Experian has to justify their findings and defend you. It took about five months, but we received the checks last week.

We did not take ppp money as we could not ethically answer one of the questions current economic uncertainty makes this loan request necessary to support the ongoing operations of the applicant. However, we did qualify and receive money for the employee retention credit for all three quarters in 2021.

I applied in August 2022 for 3 businesses, haven't received any updates since Dec 2022.

FaceMask said:

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I applied in August 2022 for 3 businesses, haven't received any updates since Dec 2022.

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If you call (866) 860-4259 and then press 3, they can tell you exactly where you are in the process. The wait time was surprisingly low and the agent was surprisingly helpful.

billydean05 said:

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We did not take ppp money as we could not ethically answer one of the questions current economic uncertainty makes this loan request necessary to support the ongoing operations of the applicant. However, we did qualify and receive money for the employee retention credit for all three quarters in 2021.

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The ERC covers 2020 compensation as well paid during the period March 13, 2020 through December 31, 2020. Up to $5,000 per employee if you qualify.

I understand. We were never shutdown and had nowhere near 50% decrease in revenue in any quarter in 2020, so we did not qualify for 2020.

Hungry Ojos said:

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FaceMask said:

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I applied in August 2022 for 3 businesses, haven't received any updates since Dec 2022.

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If you call (866) 860-4259 and then press 3, they can tell you exactly where you are in the process. The wait time was surprisingly low and the agent was surprisingly helpful.

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Thank you brother, I tried several months ago and wait time was almost 2 hrs everytime I call.

Will try again.

Hungry Ojos said:

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We ended up retaining Experian to do the ERC amendments for us in exchange for 10% of what is recovered. They indemnify and hold you harmless for any decisions they make on your behalf, so if the IRS comes a callin' Experian has to justify their findings and defend you. It took about five months, but we received the checks last week.

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an audit will still not be fun for you, it will be a royal pain in the ass, and who knows what else they will dig into outside your ERC once they start digging around... at least experian is a real company though, so many of these outfits will be gone with the wind by the time an audit rolls around.