Updates and Resources for Business

On September 9, 2021, President Biden’s administration released the Path Out of The Pandemic: President Biden’s COVID-19 Action Plan that outlines six main components designed to provide economic, health, and safety relief to businesses, schools, and healthcare systems.

The six science-based components include:

1. Vaccinating the Unvaccinated
2. Furthering Protection for the Vaccinated
3. Keeping Schools Safely Open
4. Increasing Testing and Requiring Masking
5. Protecting Our Economic Recovery
6. Improving Care for Those with COVID-19

Additionally, the plan details the following issues that are most likely to impact NAMM member businesses and their families.

• Calls on large entertainment venues to require proof of vaccination or testing for entry
• Requires employers with 100+ employees to ensure their workers are vaccinated or tested weekly and requires employers to provide paid time off to get vaccinated. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will shortly release a rule on this with guidelines and additional information.
• Calls on all states to adopt vaccine requirements for all school employees and all K-12 school staff, faculty, and students to be COVID tested regularly
• Provides additional funding to school districts for safe school reopening, including backfilling salaries and other funding withheld by states for implementing COVID safety measures
• Strengthens the COVID Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program, which provides long-term, low-cost loans to small businesses
• Streamlines Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan forgiveness for small loans
• Increases support for COVID-burdened hospitals

NAMM will continue to monitor this and other issues impacting our members. Visit NAMM.org frequently to check for upcoming webinars on relevant topics that affect your business.

View the Full Plan

Congress is considering ending the Employee Retention Tax Credit (ERTC) to help offset some costs of the bipartisan infrastructure plan. The proposal was included in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act recently passed by the Senate. The legislation is now pending in the House of Representatives.

The ERTC is a payroll tax credit created to help businesses partially offset the costs of keeping employees on payroll and on employer-sponsored health insurance during the pandemic. The provision was initially implemented by the CARES Act from March 13, 2020, through December 31, 2021, for eligible employers. The ERTC was extended and modified in subsequent COVID-19 relief legislation through December 31, 2021. Apparently, many small businesses have not elected to take the ERTC, opting instead to seek assistance through the more popular Paycheck Protection Program.

The provision in the Senate-passed infrastructure bill proposes to sunset the ERTC after September 30, 2021 – essentially three months early. The tax break would remain available until the end of 2021 for a narrow group of eligible entities known as recovery start-up businesses.

Meanwhile, the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department recently released guidance on the employee retention tax credit. The IRS and the Treasury guidance in Notice 2021-49 addresses various issues regarding the application of the employee retention credit in both 2020 and 2021, building on earlier guidance in Notice 2021-20 and Notice 2021-23. NAMM will continue to monitor this issue and will post updates here as they are available.

New Portal Opens August 4, 2021

The U.S. SBA is launching an online portal on August 4, 2021, to process PPP loan forgiveness program applications directly, assisting individual banks that have opted-in to the program. This streamlined process is available to borrowers who received $150,000 or less, benefiting millions of small businesses and independent contractors by reducing the burden on lenders to process millions of loan forgiveness requests.

Important Information:

• Lenders must opt-in to the program, and currently more than 600 banks have done so.
• Borrowers should visit the SBA Direct Forgiveness Portal to start a request.
• Borrowers with questions should contact SBA Customer Service, M–F, 8 am–8pm EST at 1-877-552-2692.
• Review the PPP Direct Forgiveness Platform User Guide before starting your application.

Save the date: August 4, 2021

Bookmark portal link.

Review the PPP Direct Forgiveness Platform User Guide.

Check the FAQ frequently as the SBA is updating it regularly.

The Small Business Administration has proposed a revision of its small business size standards for virtually all wholesale and retail businesses. The proposed standard for musical instrument retail stores (NAICS Code 451140) would increase from $12 million in annual revenues, to $20 million.

SBA size standards are important because being classified as a "small business" paves the way for individual businesses to qualify for SBA loans, disaster relief loans and other government benefits.

The review of size standards takes place every five years. The SBA proposal will be open for comment until July 26.

NAMM will continue to monitor this issue closely and will post updates here as they are available.

On May 10, the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced the launch of the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery (CSLFR) Funds established by the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, to provide $350 billion in emergency funding for eligible state, local, territorial, and Tribal governments.

Treasury also released details on how these funds can be used to respond to acute pandemic response needs, fill revenue shortfalls among these governments, and support the communities and populations hardest-hit by the COVID-19 crisis.

Eligible state, territorial, metropolitan city, county, and Tribal governments may now request their allocation of CSLFR Funds through the Treasury Submission Portal.

These funds allow for a broad range of uses to address the disproportionate public health and economic impacts of the crisis on the hardest-hit communities, populations, and households.

A partial list of potential uses:

• Small Business Assistance: To support small businesses, helping them to address financial challenges caused by the pandemic and to make investments in COVID-19 prevention and mitigation tactics, as well as to provide technical assistance.
• Education Assistance: To address educational disparities through new or expanded early learning services, providing additional resources to high-poverty school districts, and offering educational services like tutoring or afterschool programs.
• Tourism, travel, and hospitality sector Assistance: To support industries that were particularly hard-hit by the COVID-19 emergency and are just now beginning to mend are eligible for support. Similarly impacted sectors within a local area are also eligible for support.

Equipped with this information, NAMM members are urged to engage with State and Local agencies as decisions are being made to allocate these and other resources.