Businesses are still waiting four years later for new employee retention tax credits promised through a pandemic-era relief program, according to Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., and Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., who wrote similar letters to the IRS to ask for urgency in processing the claims.
"While the public health concerns of the pandemic have largely ended, for many hard-hit industries and businesses the economic aftermath has not only persisted, but grown worse, severely delaying and regressing the anticipated economic recovery that American businesses were hoping for once COVID-19 abated," Tenney wrote in a letter dated last week, Punchbowl News reported Tuesday.
Tenney and Tuberville said the IRS backlog could leave small businesses with little recourse or to be forced to close, and demanded to know when the agency will resume processing the tax credit claims.
"Each day that passes with outstanding ERC claims unprocessed is a disservice to taxpayers and a threat to small- and medium-sized businesses," Tuberville wrote.
The tax credit program, which was intended to help businesses keep workers on their payrolls during the pandemic, ended after 2021, but businesses can still file claims.
However, the program became riddled by scams and fraud, and Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith, R-Mo., proposed cutting off the claims early. The bill has not proceeded in the Senate.
Tenney wrote that keeping fraudulent claims from being paid while making sure that legitimate claims are paid in a timely manner "are not mutually exclusive objectives."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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