Are Sole Proprietors Eligible For Employee Retention Credit

COVID-19’s pandemic caused unimaginable hardships to many organizations and businesses around the globe. Lockdowns, social distance, health and security measures and lockdowns have caused many employers to face reduced revenue, increased expenses and disruptions in their operations.

To help employers retain their employees and provide them with health benefits during this difficult time, the U.S. government has introduced the Employee Retention Credit (ERC), a refundable tax credit that can offset some of the payroll costs for eligible employers.

The ERC, which was originally enacted in 2020 by the CARES Act, was extended and modified later by subsequent legislation in both 2021 & 2023. This article will provide an overview of the ERC and its workings, as well as how to apply for it in different time periods.

For a brief reading of what the Employee Retention Credit or ERC is, take a look at this video from the YouTube channel “ERC Specialists”. You can also continue below to read an in-depth explanation of ERC.

What is Employee Retention Credit? Are Sole Proprietors Eligible For Employee Retention Credit

The Employee Retention Credit (ERC) is a refundable tax credit for businesses and tax-exempt organizations that had employees and were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The ERC has been created by the CARES Act for 2020. It was further extended and modified with subsequent legislation in 2021, 2023. The ERC is designed to encourage employers to retain their employees and offer them health benefits in times of crisis.

Main Features and Advantages

Credits are equal in percentage to the wages and insurance costs that employees who qualify for them have paid, but there is a maximum per employee.
The credit amount and percentage vary according to the time period in which it is claimed. For 2020, the percent is 50%, and the limit is $5,000 for each employee per year. For 2021, the percentage is 70%, and the limit is $7,000 per employee per quarter. In 2023, 70% of the employees will be eligible for the first two quarterly limits and 40% in the final two. The limit for each employee is $10,000. Are Sole Proprietors Eligible For Employee Retention Credit
The credit is fully refundable. If the amount of credit exceeds an employer’s liability for payroll tax, the excess will then be paid back to the employer.
Employers may claim the credit if their gross receipts have declined significantly or they have had to suspend operations in whole or part due to a COVID-19-related government order. The credit can be claimed by employers who have been classified as recovery startups only until 2023.
The credit can be claimed by filing an amended employment tax return (Form 941-X) or by reducing employment tax deposits in anticipation of the credit. Employers may also request an advanced payment of the credit using Form 7200.

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Eligibility Criteria

To qualify for Employee Retention credit (ERC), employers must meet either of two main criteria.

The employer’s business or organization was fully or partially suspended by a government order due to COVID-19 during a calendar quarter in 2020 or 2021
The gross receipts of the employer for a calendar-quarter in 2020 or 2020 were less than 50 percent (for 2020), or 80 percent (for 2021), of their gross receipts during the same calendar quarter in 2019.

A special rule is in place for businesses that have started operating after February 15, 2020, and whose average gross receipts per year are no more than one million dollars. These businesses are eligible for the ERC, regardless of whether their business has been suspended or if revenue has declined.

Business Suspension

A business or organization is considered fully or partially suspended by a government order if:

The order limits commerce, travel, or group meetings due to COVID-19
The order impacts the operations of a business or organization
The order applies to any calendar quarter in 2020 or 2021

Some examples of government orders that can cause a business suspension are:

Stay-at-home orders that restrict non-essential businesses from operating
Certain businesses have curfews that limit their hours of operations
Capacity limits that reduce the number of customers or clients that can be served by a business
Travel restrictions or bans that impact the ability of an organization to transport goods and services

To determine whether an employer’s business was suspended fully or partially by a government directive, the employer must:

How the nature and scope and the order affect the operation of the business
The length and frequency of your order and the way it corresponds to the calendar quarters
The extent and severity of the impact of the order on the revenues and expenses of the business

Revenue Decline

It is considered a significant decrease in gross revenue if a business has:

The gross receipts in any calendar quarter of 2020 will be less than 50% the gross receipts in the same quarter of 2019.
The gross receipts from any calendar quarter during 2021 are less than 80% compared to the same quarter’s gross receipts from 2019.

Gross receipts can be defined as all the money received by an organization or business from any source during their annual accounting period, without deductions. Gross receipts include:

Sales of goods & services
Interest, dividends, rents, royalties, and annuities
Donations, contributions, grants and gifts Are Sole Proprietors Eligible For Employee Retention Credit
Dues and fees for membership
Gross profits from trades and businesses

Employers must use the following formulas to calculate gross receipts and compare them between quarters.

Use the same method (cash or accrual accounting) as it used when filing its federal income taxes for 2019
Use the same calendar quarters as it did for its federal employment tax return (Form 941 ) for 2019 and 2021/2022
The same sources as reported in the federal tax return for 2019

Recovery Startup Business

The recovery startup business is one that:

Began carrying on any trade or business after February 15, 2020,
The average annual gross receipts for the three tax years ending in the year preceding the quarter for which credit is calculated cannot exceed $1 million

The ERC is available to a recovery startup business regardless of whether or not it meets the criteria for business suspension or revenue decrease. However, there are some limitations and special rules that apply to recovery startup businesses, such as:

The maximum credit amount per quarter is $50,000
Only wages paid during the third and fourth quarters in 2021 are eligible for this credit
All recovery startup businesses are subject to an aggregate cap of $250,000,000.

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Credit Amount and Calculation

The ERC has different rules and amounts for different periods of time and different types of employers. The main factors that affect the ERC are:

How much an employer’s company was affected by the pandemic.
What number of employees did the employer have in 2019 and 2020/2021?
How much did the employer pay each employee in health insurance?

To receive the ERC, employers must submit forms to the IRS. The employer must provide proof of how much they paid their employees for health insurance as well as the ERC. The IRS will then check the forms before giving the money to employers. The employer may use the money in order to pay their employees’ health insurance premiums, or get refunds for their payroll tax.

The ERC is not available forever. The ERC will expire in September 2022. Employers must claim their ERC before they expire or become unavailable. The employer has to spend the money efficiently and not waste. Are Sole Proprietors Eligible For Employee Retention Credit

The following information provides more details on the ERC credit and how it is calculated.

Time Period

Different laws introduced, amended and terminated the ERC in 2020, 2021 and 2022. The credit amount varies depending on the time period for which it is claimed. The following table summarises the main features and differences between the ERCs of each time period:

Time Period	Law	Eligible Employers	Credit Rate	Qualified Wages
2020	CARES Act	Employers with business suspension or revenue decline of more than 50%	50% of qualified wages up to $10,000 per employee per year	Wages paid from March 13 to December 31, 2020
Q1-Q3 2021	CAA and ARPA	Employers with business suspension or revenue decline of more than 20%	70% of qualified wages up to $10,000 per employee per quarter	Wages paid from January 1 to September 30, 2021
Q3-Q4 2021 (Recovery Startup Business)	ARPA	Recovery startup businesses with average annual gross receipts of no more than $1 million,	70% of qualified wages up to $10,000 per employee per quarter (subject to a $50,000 cap per quarter),	Wages paid from July 1 to December 31, 2021,
Q4 2021 – Q3 2022 (Severely Financially Distressed Employer)	ARPA and IIJA	Employers with a revenue decline of more than 90%	70% of qualified wages up to $10,000 per employee per quarter	Wages paid from October 1, 2021, to September 30, 2022

The Number of Employees

The number employed affects how wages are calculated and defined, as well as the health insurance premiums for eligible employees. A small employer or a large employer is determined by the number of employees who worked full-time (FTEs) in 2019 and the time period. The table below summarizes the rules and thresholds for determining employer size in each time period.

Time Period	Small Employer Threshold	Large Employer Threshold
2020	Less than or equal to 100 FTEs in 2019	More than 100 FTEs in 2019
Q1-Q2 2021	Less than or equal to 500 FTEs in 2019	More than 500 FTEs in 2019
Q3-Q4 2021	Less than or equal to 500 FTEs in any calendar quarter in either calendar year beginning after December 31, 2019, and ending before July 1, 2021. If an employer did not have in either calendar year beginning after December 31, 2019, and ending before July 1, 2021, the employer is treated as a small eligible employer if it had less than or equal to 500 FTEs in any calendar quarter beginning after June 30, 2021. For recovery startup businesses, the employer size is irrelevant. For severely financially distressed employers, the employer size is irrelevant if the employer had a revenue decline of more than 90%. Otherwise, the same rules as Q1-Q2 2021 apply.	More than 500 FTEs in any calendar quarter in either calendar year beginning after December 31, 2019, and ending before July 1, 2021. If an employer did not exist in either calendar year beginning after December 31, 2019, and ending before July 1, 2021, the employer is treated as a large eligible employer if it had more than 500 FTEs in any calendar quarter beginning after June 30, 2021.

To count FTEs for a given year or quarter, an employer must use the following steps:

Count the number of employees who worked at least 30 hours per week (or at least 130 hours per month) for each month in the year or quarter
Add up the total hours worked by all other employees (who are not counted as FTEs) for each month in the year or quarter
Divide the total hours by120and round down to the nearest whole number
Add the number of FTEs from Step One and Step Three for each month in the year or quarter
Calculate the average number of FTEs by adding up the monthly totals and dividing by 12 (for a year) or 3 (for a quarter)

Qualified Wages and Health Insurance Costs

Qualified wages are wages paid to eligible employees during a period of business suspension or revenue decline. Qualified wages include tips, commissions, bonuses, severance pay, sick leave pay, family leave pay, and other forms of compensation. Qualified salaries also include the costs of providing health coverage to eligible workers, including premiums, copays, deductibles, and coinsurance.

The employer size, the time period and the calculation of the qualified wage and health insurance cost will affect the calculation. The following table provides a summary of the rules for different scenarios. Are Sole Proprietors Eligible For Employee Retention Credit

Employer Size	Time Period	Qualified Wages and Health Insurance Costs	Example
Small	2020	All wages and health insurance costs paid to any employee, regardless of whether the employee worked or not	An employer with 80 FTEs in 2019 paid $8,000 in wages and $2,000 in health insurance costs to an employee in 2020. The employer had a revenue decline of more than 50% in Q2 2020. The qualified wages and health insurance costs for Q2 2020 are $10,000.
Small	Q1-Q3 2021	All wages and health insurance costs paid to any employee, regardless of whether the employee worked or not	An employer with 400 FTEs in 2019 paid $12,000 in wages and $3,000 in health insurance costs to an employee in Q1 2021. The employer had a revenue decline of more than 20% in Q1 2021. The qualified wages and health insurance costs for Q1 2021 are $15,000.
Small	Q3-Q4 2021 (Recovery Startup Business)	All wages and health insurance costs paid to any employee, regardless of whether the employee worked or not (subject to a $50,000 cap per quarter)	A recovery startup business that began operations in March 2020 paid $9,000 in wages and $1,000 in health insurance costs to an employee in Q3 2021. The business had average annual gross receipts of $800,000. The qualified wages and health insurance costs for Q3 2021 are $10,000.
Small	Q4 2021 – Q3 2022 (Severely Financially Distressed Employer)	All wages and health insurance costs paid to any employee, regardless of whether the employee worked or not	An employer with 600 FTEs in Q2 2019 paid $11,000 in wages and $4,000 in health insurance costs to an employee in Q4 2021. The employer had a revenue decline of more than 90% in Q4 2021. The qualified wages and health insurance costs for Q4 2021 are $15,000.
Large	2020	Wages and health insurance costs paid to an employee for the time that the employee did not work (up to the amount that the employee would have been paid for working an equivalent duration during the 30 days immediately preceding the period of economic hardship)	An employer with 120 FTEs in 2019 paid $10,000 in wages and $2,000 in health insurance costs to an employee who worked full-time (40 hours per week) in 2020. The employer had a business suspension due to a government order in April 2020. The employee did not work for two weeks in April 2020. The qualified wages and health insurance costs for April 2020 are $2,308 ($10,000 x2/52+$2,000 x2/52).
Large	Q1-Q3 2021	Wages and health insurance costs paid to an employee for the time that the employee did not work (up to the amount that the employee would have been paid for working an equivalent duration during the 90 days immediately preceding the period of economic hardship)	An employer with 550 FTEs in 2019 paid $15,000 in wages and $5,000 in health insurance costs to an employee who worked full-time (40 hours per week) in Q1 2021. The employer had a revenue decline of more than 20% in Q1 2021. The employee did not work for three weeks in Q1 2021. The qualified wages and health insurance costs for Q1 2021 are $5,769 ($15,000 x3/13+$5,000 x3/13).
Large	Q3-Q4 2021 (Severely Financially Distressed Employer)	All wages and health insurance costs paid to any employee, regardless of whether the employee worked or not (only if the employer had a revenue decline of more than 90%. Otherwise, the same rules as Q1-Q32021 apply.)	An employer with 700 FTEs in Q4 2019 paid $12,000 in wages and $6,000 in health insurance costs to an employee who worked full-time (40 hours per week) in Q4 2021. The employer had a revenue decline of more than 90% in Q4 2021. The qualified wages and health insurance costs

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Claim and Report Credit

For the Internal Revenue Service to grant the Employee Retention credit (ERC), employers must file either a federal tax return for employment (Form 941), or an amended tax return for employment (Form941-X). The employer must report the qualified wages and health insurance costs paid to eligible employees and the amount of credit claimed for each quarter.

Form 941

Form 941 is a quarterly tax return that the employer must file to show his federal tax liabilities. This includes income taxes, Medicare tax and Social Security taxes. Form 941 is used by the employer to claim ERC for the current quarter or future. Form 941 can be used by the employer to:

ERCs can be used to reduce the amount of tax that an employer must pay to the IRS.
Request an advance payment of the ERC if the credit exceeds the taxes that the employer has to deposit Are Sole Proprietors Eligible For Employee Retention Credit
Carry over any excess credit into the following quarter

To fill out Form 941 correctly and avoid common errors, the employer should:

Use the newest version of the Form 941, which reflects changes to laws that impact the ERC.
Follow the instructions and worksheets provided by the IRS for calculating and reporting the ERC
Use Line 1c to report on the health insurance and wages that eligible employees have received.
Use Line 13d when reporting the credit for each quarter.
Use Line 13f for any advance payment received from IRS.
If you need to receive an advance payment, use Line 24.
Line 25 is the place to enter any excess credit which can be carried to a subsequent quarter.
Sign and date Form 941 and attach any supporting documents or schedules

Some tips and resources for filling out Form 941 are:

Form 941 can be submitted faster and more securely by using electronic filing (efile) or online services
The IRS website has updated FAQs on the ERC and Form 941.
For clarifications or help, you can contact the IRS.

Form 941-X

Form 941-X allows you to correct mistakes or make adjustments in Form 941 that has already been filed. The Form 941X allows the employer retroactively to claim ERC for previous quarters. The employer can use the Form 941 X to: Are Sole Proprietors Eligible For Employee Retention Credit

Claim a refund or credit for overpaid taxes due to claiming the ERC
Report any additional wages or health insurance costs that are paid to employees who are eligible but not reported on Form 951.
You can correct any errors or omissions that may have affected the credit claimed amount on Form 941.

To avoid making common errors and fill out the Form 941-X correctly, employers should:

Use the latest version 941-X to reflect the updated laws and regulations that impact the ERC.
Follow the IRS instructions and worksheets for calculating the ERC and reporting it.
Use Part 2 of Form 941 to indicate which lines are being amended or corrected.
Use Part 3 for explaining why form 941 has been corrected or adjusted
Line 24 is used to report additional wages and health insurance premiums paid to eligible employees.
Use Line 25 for any additional credit claimed each quarter.
You can use Line 26 to request a refund or credit due to claiming ERC.
Sign and date Form 941, and attach any supporting documentation or schedules

You can find some helpful tips on how to fill out the Form 941-X here:

Fill out a separate form 941-X per quarter being corrected or recalculated Are Sole Proprietors Eligible For Employee Retention Credit
File Form 941-X as soon as possible after discovering an error or making an 0adjustment on Form 941
Check the IRS website for updates, FAQs, and guidance on Form 941-X and the ERC
If you need clarification or assistance, contact the IRS or an accountant.

Deadline and Statute of Limitations

The deadline to submit Form 941 is usually the last day in the month following each quarter. For example, Q1 2020 (January-March) Form 941 will be due on April 30, 2021. Nevertheless, if the employer deposited all taxes due in a given quarter on time, they may file Form 941 before the 10th day. Following the end of the quarter. Form 941 for the first quarter of 2021 (January – March) is due on May 10, 2021. Are Sole Proprietors Eligible For Employee Retention Credit

The deadline to file Form 941-X generally is three years after the date the original Form 941 is filed, or two years after the date the tax is paid. For example, Q1 2019 (January to March), Form 941 had to be submitted by April 30, 2019. If the employer has filed Forms 941 and paid tax by April 30th 2020, they have until April 30th 2023 to submit Form 941X. If an employer filed form 941 on April 30 2020 and paid the tax by June 15, 2020, then the deadline to file Form 941-X will be June 15, 2022.

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Conclusion

Employee Retention Credit is a valuable tax credit that can assist employers affected by the COVID-19 Pandemic to keep their employees and reduce the impact on their business or organization.

The ERC can be claimed by filing Form 941 or Form 941-X with the IRS and reporting the qualified wages and costs of health insurance paid to eligible workers. The ERC credit can be claimed with IRS Forms 941 or 941X by reporting to them the qualified health insurance and wages costs as well as the amount claimed each quarter.

Don’t miss this chance to get a tax break if your employer meets the ERC criteria. The ERC has a time limit and deadline for claiming. The forms should be filed as soon as you can. You can use the resources and advice provided in this post to avoid common mistakes and fill them out correctly. For clarifications or help, you can always contact an IRS agent or tax professional.

The ERC is a great tool for both your business and employees. It will help you to keep your employees, maintain a healthy cash flow, as well as recover from pandemic. We hope that this article helped you to understand more about ERC and the claim process. We thank you for reading. Please stay safe.

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Are Sole Proprietors Eligible For Employee Retention Credit

What is ERC and what does it do?

Employee Retention Credit (ERC) is a tax incentive for employers that retained their employees on their payrolls during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

It was created in March of 2020 by the CARES Act and later extended and amended by the CAA Act of December 2020 (Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021).

Are all ERC applicants eligible?

The ERC is not available to everyone. Employers who retained their employees and paid them wages between March 13, 2020, and December 31, 2021, are eligible.

More details are available above. But here are some of the highlights.

A government order has suspended the business or organization (wholly or partially) due to COVID-19.
Their gross receipts in a quarter of 2020 or 2021 are less than the percentage of their gross revenue in the same quarter of 2019.
These businesses are recovery startups that have been in operation since February 15, 2020. They also generate gross revenues of no more than $1 million on average per year.

How much does the ERC cost?

The amount of ERC an organization or business receives depends on several factors.

One of the factors is the length of time the company has been in business, the number and type of employees it has, the amount that qualifies as wages, or the health insurance premiums paid to employees who are eligible. The article above provides a detailed explanation on how ERC is calculated.

How to claim the ERC?

For an employer to claim the ERC, they must file either a federal reform of employment tax or an amended employment tax return (941-X).

Employers must declare the wages and costs of health insurance paid to employees who qualify and the credit claimed each quarter.

When is the deadline to submit the ERC form?

The deadline for filing the ERC forms is different for Form 941 and Form 941-X.

For Form 941 is generally the last day of the month following the end of each quarter. In contrast, the deadline to submit Form 941 X is generally set at three years since the date of the original 941. This can also be up to two years, based on the date when the tax is paid.