Coronavirus Small Business Update for New Hampshire Small Business Owners

I have some new information to share, some of which is not fully verified, but I'll share it with you anyway.

I want to talk about Unemployment, the EIDL Loans/Grants, and the mother of loans, the PPP Payroll Protection Program

Unemployment is still the simplest place to send employees who can't work for you. With the additional $600 a week that people can get on unemployment for 39 weeks, along with what New Hampshire unemployment would previously have provided before, this isn't that bad a deal, and keeps you out of it as an employer. We're unclear now, if your future rate will be affected by going up, but right now my attitude is that this should be your worst problem.

In a previous email, I had suggested you apply for the SBA Economic Injury Disaster Loan, EIDL, which included a $10,000 advance that didn't need to be repaid. The expectation was that this was a quick cash, get it in 3 days kind of thing. To date, after at least 2 weeks, we are not aware of anyone who's received this money.

Although we have been unable to confirm this as official position, the SBA appears to be changing their tune and now saying it will give you a $1,000 per employee advance up to $10,000. Again, we still can't confirm that this is a change in policy, but this EIDL advance may yield a lot less than originally expected to some clients.

Here is the SBA Email bulletin suggesting the change to how the EIDL works:

Here is the link to the SBA Loan Application for the Covid-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) and whatever advance up to $10,000 the SBA decides.

Apply Here: https://covid19relief.sba.gov

As I've said before, everyone should be applying for the PPP loans including sole proprietors and partnerships even if you have NO employees. It is NOT a loan as long as the money is used for payroll, rent utilities, group health insurance within 8 weeks of getting the loan. Those who have not applied because the PPP amount was not much more than the supposed $10,000 EIDL advance may need to rethink.

In general, you will need to locate an SBA lender. Most banks are SBA lenders,but are only making this program available to their own depositors.

We have identified one lender, www.kabbage.com, that is making the SBA PPP loans to anyone.

Here is a link that describes the PPP program

https://www.uschamber.com/sites/default/files/023595_comm_corona_virus_smallbiz_loan_final.pdf

Here is a link to a SAMPLE PPP application

https://www.sba.gov/document/sba-form--paycheck-protection-program-ppp-sample-application-form

As many of you have already taken advantage of, Appletree is offering an additional service ( for our monthly clients only) that involves our helping determine your eligibility and Average Monthly Payroll costs for applying to the PPP program, along with helping you comply with the necessary documentation later to get the loan forgiveness. The bulk of the work for this will be for the backend piece to get the loan forgiven, a process we have no idea how it will work. If you have not agreed to take advantage of this service, and would like to consider it now, please let us know. For those of you who wish to apply yourself and to later on deal with whatever paperwork is required to get it forgiven, we are happy to provide you with the paperwork we have. Please provide us with a document list, and we will gladly send it your portal.

Please understand that the PPP application information our service delivers has all the support you should need to provide to your bank, but that each bank is asking for that information differently, and it's your responsibility to provide it your bank properly.

With respect to the PPP loans, you should also know that if you use this money to pay your employees, you will still be on the hook for employer taxes, specifically Employer FICA and Medicare and Federal Unemployment taxes.

Once some clients actually start receiving some of this PPP money and the SBA publishes more detail on how the forgiveness will be calculated, I will work with you on how best to use the money. We don't recommend you rush to hire everybody back blind until you've talked with us.

Thank you, and again. stay safe...

Steve Feinberg