Claiming payroll credits – employee retention and paid leave

Business owners, whether it’s your own tax firm or your clients’ businesses, can take advantage of some tax credits and other benefits to help offset the financial impacts of COVID-19.

Some beneficial programs were put in place since the arrival of COVID-19, including the Paycheck Protection Program, the employee retention credit, paid sick and family leave, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act and the American Rescue Plan Act.

In order to apply these credits and benefits to your clients’ returns though, you need to know how they work.

“It’s difficult to find someone whose life hasn’t been impacted by COVID,” said Steve O’Rourke, EA, founder and president of O’Rourke Tax Service, Inc. “These credits and other programs can be extremely beneficial to just about anyone.”

O’Rourke is teaching a webinar called Claiming Payroll Credits for Employee Retention and Paid Leave, which will cover credits tax pros and their business clients can take advantage of, whether or not they have employees. Over the past few months, revisions were made by the Taxpayer Certainty and Disaster Tax Relief Act of 2020 (Relief Act) and the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARP Act ), including amending and extending the employee retention credit and the availability of certain advance payments of tax credits. For example, originally the employee retention credit was only available to those who did not have a Paycheck Protection Program loan. This rule was recently revised.

O’Rourke will go over all these programs, changes to the credits and more in the upcoming webinar. It will also cover the differences between 2020 and 2021. He said it will be a hands-on course with plenty of examples and will show, step-by-step, how to complete Form 941.

“All I want people to realize is that it’s such an important topic,” O’Rourke said. “Even though you may not know much about any of these programs, they affect a lot more people than you’d think and you won’t be alone.”

This webinar is included with Premium level NATP membership. Professional level members can use code FREECPE at checkout to redeem a free 2 CPE credit. If you can’t make the live broadcast, it will also be offered on-demand.