Congressional leaders on Sunday reached a deal on a $900 billion economic relief package.
Of particular interest to our members were the provisions dealing with the CARES Act and PPP.
The bill will likely extend the deadline for states and cities to use unspent money approved for them by the Cares Act, something that NUCA and NUCA NJ lobbied for in recent weeks. States and cities have until the end of the year to spend billions of dollars before it expires and has to be returned to the federal government. The deal would extend that deadline for a full year.
The largest expenditure in the legislation is more than $300 billion in business relief, including about $275 billion for another round of the Paycheck Protection Program. In addition to making more funding available to businesses, it also appears that businesses that received PPP loans, and had them forgiven, will be allowed to deduct the costs covered by those loans on their federal tax returns. Those costs would be deductible so long as a PPP recipient can show a loss in revenue in 2020 compared to prior years.
The House and Senate also both passed a continuing resolution to extend the funding of the federal government for an extra day to avoid a shutdown. The extension provides time to draft the COVID relief package and add it to a $1.4 trillion spending bill to fund the government through September.