All right. Hello and welcome to today's webinar. Our speaker today is Missy Waits from Alliant Group. Before I turn it over to Missy, I'd like to let those of you who are live with us know that you may submit questions during the webinar via the Q&A tab at the bottom of the screen. This webinar will also be recorded so that you may watch or rewatch on demand at your convenience. With that, I will turn it over to Missy. Thank you so much and hi, everyone. I'm super excited to be talking with all of you today, especially regarding all of the amazing incentives that AED members should know about. So that's really what we're going to be discussing today is the Employee Retention Credit is a brand new incentive that came out with the CARES Act last year and very applicable to AED members. So with that, we'll get started and I'll let you know a little bit more about Alliant Group as well. So this is me and I'm, you know, a director here at Alliant Group. I've been here for nine years. And I do have to say, you know, while tax credits and incentives is our, you know, our main service offering. This is the most impactful credit that we've seen come out just in my time at Alliant Group and since our inception 20 years ago. So the Research and Development Tax Credit is really our main service line. But, you know, the Employee Retention Credit is super impactful. And that's really what we're going to be discussing in more detail today to see how AED members can take advantage of that. A little bit more about Alliant Group. Since we've been around for 20 years, we've actually helped businesses get back over $13 billion in tax credits and incentives. And that's really important to us because not only are we partnering with CPA firms to help bring this to their clients, but more so than that, we're here to serve small to medium sized businesses. And that's what, you know, America is the backbone, the backbone of America is a small to medium sized businesses. And these tax credits and incentives are meant to strengthen those businesses. So that's what we're here to do as well. Just a little bit about our leadership team. You'll see a bunch of these faces here amongst myself as well. So we are comprised of several former congressmen, senators, and also led by four former IRS commissioners. And the reason being is, you know, with these tax credits and incentives, the IRS wants to make sure that we're doing everything within the letter of the law. And these former IRS commissioners have joined us to make sure that they're serving small businesses, but also in the way that Congress and the IRS intended. A little bit more about our commissioners, as well as some of our other folks from Congress. So you'll see here Mark Iverson, who served in the IRS from 2003 to 2007 under the Bush administration. And, you know, he's one of the people that's been super influential in making sure that every single business is not claiming a dollar more or a dollar less than they're entitled to. So he's been super instrumental in developing our methodology and how we offer these incentives to businesses to make sure that they're claiming every single dollar they can get. And you also see here Dean Zerbe and Don Levy. They were in the Senate Finance Committee and very influential in writing some of the tax law that includes these incentives. So they help us really figure out how were these tax credits meant to be interpreted, and how are they meant to incentivize businesses. All right, so the employee retention credit is, you know, like I mentioned, one of the most influential pieces of legislation that's come out in the last 20 years, and it's super timely it's meant to incentivize businesses for keeping employees on over the course of the pandemic, but not just for businesses that were struggling. It's also meant to help businesses that were able to pivot over the course of COVID, whether it be making changes to their operations to be able to keep their employees working and also stay profitable in a really uncertain time. It's a wage based incentive, but it's meant to offset payroll tax. But the biggest thing that's the driver of this credit is that it is a refundable tax credit. And some of you may not know how refundable credits work so I'll kind of walk through that, you know, a refundable tax credit, you know, it's not just meant to offset the tax that you owe. But even if you're able to access more credits than, than what you owe in payroll tax so let's say in one quarter of this year, you owe $50,000 of payroll tax and we're able to find you $100,000 credit. That credit can actually be taken as a full refund of $100,000. So really really impactful to businesses. If you look at the overview here. It was put into place with the cares act last year is amongst other code related incentives. And, you know, once Congress saw an opportunity to keep employees on in these small businesses they even expanded the credit even further. And they did that in December of last year with the code of relief bill, making it more expansive to businesses and increasing the amount of businesses that can take advantage by raising the threshold of employees that you could claim towards this credit, and also expanding the requirements to qualify. There's a big study here of intellectual distributor that we work with, as you can see, 69 employees, almost a half million dollars in credits. And that's just, you know, one of the ways that you can qualify with, which is the revenue job of more than And that is, you know, unfortunately, as a result of the pandemic, many businesses are seeing that a drop in revenue has occurred and that is a big driver of this credit as well but only one of the ways in which you can qualify. Some of the myths that I hear I talked to businesses all day long of all shapes and sizes, and every one of them, you know, tell me hey I you know wasn't shut down I was only shut down for a short time. You know, I, you know, our employees stayed on I was an essential business. You know, those are the types of things that I hear and that doesn't disqualify them from taking advantage of this credit. So if that's you if you're, if you're saying to yourself, you know, I wasn't shut down, I must not qualify. You really should take another look at this because this credit is not just for businesses that had to fully shut down. As you can see, you know, a partial suspension is what Congress actually put in place for this, which is pretty broad, you know, a disruption of your business activity. What does that even mean, could be that you know one of your, your supply chain supply chain vendors aren't able to get you products and you're having to delay projects reduction and services offer, let's say you're an electrical distributor and one lines are you're not able to deliver to residential right I mean, it could mean so many different things as it relates to your business so definitely should be taking another look at this. Another method I hear, I can't, I can't claim ERC because I've already claimed PPP. This is a big myth that a lot of businesses still think they're not able to take advantage of both because initially when it was put into place, the employee retention credit wasn't available alongside PPP. And with that code relief bill in December, they actually took that limitation away. And now you can take both. So it just impacts the calculation of the credit. And that's something that align group can help you decipher and figure out how you can take advantage of both, even if you've claimed full forgiveness for your PPP dollars. into that my PPP loans were forgiven so I can't be eligible for this. That is not the case and oftentimes, many of the businesses that I speak to the PPP loan really didn't fully cover their costs of payroll and they need additional funds, which is why has allowed people to take advantage of ERC alongside PPP. So definitely not going to exclude you from this credit should absolutely be talking about this and figuring out if this is something you guys can take advantage of. My sales rebounded in Q1 of 2021, you know, I don't want your takeaway here to be, I had to have a drop in revenue to qualify. That's not the case. There's that's only one way in which to qualify for the credit there are other methods to make sure that you can take advantage of this while not every single business will qualify it's it's still at least worth the conversation. Even if your revenue wasn't down. That's actually why Congress wants to reward you because you were able to still remain profitable and make all the changes that you made and keep your employees working, they want to incentivize you for that. So there is some complexity when claiming this credit, it's definitely not a do it yourself or I can do this at home documentation here is going to be key to making sure that you can have supporting documents and substantiation of your credits that you claim. If you want to take advantage of PPP alongside the credit. As you can see here there's interplay with PPP meaning you can't take the same dollar or the same wage towards PPP that you take towards the employee retention credit. It gets very complex very quickly in terms of how much you qualify for. And that's what a line group can help you decipher is which dollars do I claim towards both how much employee retention credits is left over for me to claim. So here's the distributor 93 employees, almost a half a million dollars in credits as well. So as you can see in comparison to the other case study we saw, you know, that actually had less employees than this and hadn't got a little bit more credits, which shows you that there are a lot of variables in play as to why you qualify for how much, so it's not a straight calculation of, you know, making sure that you claim every single employee. So there's going to be some, some variation in the number of employees that could qualify towards this. And that's what a line group can help you figure out is not just if you qualify but for how much. I want to make sure we take questions here. And, you know, I'm one of our technical directors within the employee retention credit here at a line group. I talked to businesses all day long about their qualifications, and I would love to take any questions now. And has any of that I haven't covered here. Any questions at all that I can answer? I believe I have one coming through. So why hasn't my CPA told me about this? So that's the big question that I get is, you know, why my accountant hasn't taken advantage of this for me. And the truth of the matter is, you know, we partner with over 4,000 CPAs to bring this education to their clients, because this is not a simple accounting function. This is a payroll tax credit. And initially when this credit came out, a lot of businesses didn't qualify. So I would venture to say a majority of the CPAs that I work with tell me, you know, I looked at this before and Missy, I didn't think they qualified with all the new changes. We're just not able to do this. Can you help us? So it's just a matter of going back to your CPA and saying, hey, I've heard that there's some expansions, you know, I've, you know, attended a webinar, you know, through my organization, you know, is this worth another look? And we'd be happy to speak with your CPA and educate them on ways for us to, you know, help them with this as well. So that's a great question. Any other questions that I can answer for everyone? I see another question coming through here about, you know, what if this were ever questioned by the IRS and, and that's a great concern for you to have. And, you know, that's exactly why we have four former IRS commissioners on staff. One in particular is Eric Hilton, who was actually in the service when the employer retention credit was put in place. He's actually helped us develop our methodology the way that the IRS wants it to be done. And so I'm going to go ahead and our methodology, the way that the IRS wants it to be done. And within all of our studies, we include full audit defense to make sure that you're covered in the event that anyone has any questions, you have full supporting documentation, and we step in for you to make sure it's fully defended. Any other questions that I can answer for anyone? Awesome. Well, I am always available to answer any specific questions as it relates to your business. I know every business is different. You know, the, the biggest driver of this is just, it's worth a conversation. There's absolutely no cost at all for us to help assess this for you. And my contact information was on that last slide there, but in case anyone wants to reach out, my email address is missy.waits at a client group.com. And I'd be happy to speak with you one-on-one to see if your business qualifies. Great. Thank you, Missy. Absolutely. Is there anything else that I can answer for you guys? Awesome. Well, again, thank you so much for having us and I look forward to speaking with all of you and thank you again. Thanks. Bye.

webinar

Employee Retention Credit

CARES Act

incentive

Alliant Group