House Passes Stimulus Bill 3/28/2020

Yesterday the House passed and the President signed the Senate’s Stimulus Bill into law. The small business loan program was of course part of that Bill.

I spoke with 2 bankers yesterday, one at a national bank and another at a regional bank. Both plan to make these loans BUT to their existing customers 1st. As such, you need to contact your bank and find out whether they plan to make these loans.

Neither banker really had any details about the program. One said that a new SBA program like this would normally take weeks before the bank could formally offer the program. Given the need to prepare loan and other docs in accordance with the Bill, but he thought this program would probably be launched by end of next week.

Given this no one really knows the extent of the documentation that will be required yet or whether guarantees will be requested (likely for SBA) or exactly how the potential for loan forgiveness will work.

What we do know is that the purpose of the loan program is to provide small businesses with capital so they can retain their employees and contractors. As such, for those of you contemplating employee cuts you may want to at least wait a few days until the details of the program come out.

I told these bankers that QBO expects to be one of the very first applicants. Two reasons – one to get some help and two so we can become familiar with the process first-hand.

QBO will be offering assistance to clients if they need it in getting these loans. The fee for such service is not known yet given we don’t know what’s involved in applying yet. If you want our help, pending us finalizing a fee, please email garyg@goqbo.com. This service will be offered by QBO on a first come, first served basis as we expect many businesses to want help completing their application.

There is a set amount of cash set aside for these loans, so if you want to participate in the program, you need to move.

03/28/2020

By: Gary Grottke, CPA, Quality Back Office