Welcome! Let’s Get Down To Business.
First of all, Welcome. Thank you for joining PIRA in the fight to #saverestaurants. We are so amazed and proud of the Portland community and its continued strength during this disaster. All of you have such an impact on the fabric of our community and as a team, we will get through this. We have no doubt about that.
Our goal with this article and the articles to come, is to provide you with information and resources to make this time easier. Bureaucracy is complicated and we seem to be living in a world that is being inundated with it daily. We hope that this can be seen as an educational resource as we all try to navigate the ever changing world around us.
With all that is happening in our industry and the economic environment, we thought it would be a good time to share some insights into the daunting world of taxes. Both of the Federal and Oregon Governments extended Tax Day from April 15th to July 15th, including making your tax payment… this doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be on your mind. In fact, now that most of us are stuck at home it is an opportune time to take a look at all the nitty gritty financials. Fun. Long story short, we want to make sure you have the most up to date and correct information to make the best decisions you can for yourself, your employees, and your business.
Our friend Heather Wallberg created a cheat sheet of information that can help when thinking through your taxes, preparing to apply for different types of funding options and also lend an insight on small ways to help cashflow right now. She broke it down into individual and small business so that we can all have a little help with this utterly confusing process.
Something to keep in the back of your mind as you read through this — Congress is working on a Coronavirus Economic Stimulus package that would put cash directly into American’s pockets as well as create additional funds for small business loans; which you could potentially use to cover costs as well as payroll expenses. We are keeping an eye on this and will update as guidance is solidified.
Individuals
If you individually earned $69,000 or less of income in 2019 you qualify to file your Federal and Oregon return for free. IRS File For Free and Oregon State File For Free
If you individually earned $55,952 or less in 2019 you could be eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit. Check your eligibility here: IRS: Earned Income Tax Credit
If you have taxes to pay, you can set up payment plans with both the federal and state governments to help ease your upfront cash burden.
Hopefully these are some helpful tricks to sideline Turbo Tax fees and set the rest of your year up for success.
Small Business
Everyone should look through all the IRS and SBA information pages on COVID-19.
The SBA Disaster Assistance Program is now in affect and has an online application that is offering low-interest disaster loans for working capital with a 30-year repayment.
There are many banks who are offering no-interest / no-fee short-term working capital loans. Some are offering 5-year business lines of credit with 90 days interest free to businesses who are affected by COVID-19. There are qualifications that apply to all of these, in an effort to keep this as short as possible, shoot Heather an email after reading through and she can help advise.
If you plan of applying for any grants, funding, loans, or lines of credit to cover business expenses, we suggest having the following documents prepared at the minimum to help the application process:
Payroll Reports
Balance Sheet and Profit & Loss Statement that reconcile to your payroll reports (for at least 2 previous years or as long as you have been open)
Current 2020 Forecast of cash flow for this year and the next two years (2020 through the end of 2022) to show how the loss will potentially affect you.
The deadline for all partnership and S Corp business tax returns was March 15, 2019 for both federal and state. If you haven't filed yet and need help either filing in full or your extension, make sure you do!
The deadline for all C Corp tax returns, both federal and state, is April 15th, 2020. Make sure to get your full return or extension in at that point.
If you have questions, comment below with them and we’ll answer as quickly as possible. Want to talk in more detail? Need help with creating financial spreadsheets, or forecasting, or help understanding what your finance options are? Send Heather an email and get a chat scheduled, her advice and help (along with a crew of accountants and financial advisors) is free of charge. At the end of the day we want to help the people and businesses that give so much life to our city, because without you all, Portland would not be the community that is is now.
Heather Wallberg + Katy from the PIRA Team
heatherw@wilcox-co.com