What’s Left for the ERC?

Alright. It’s our only second LinkedIn Live, actually, I think first LinkedIn Live, I think last time we did it on Facebook or YouTube, not sure which one, but Nick was on that one as well. Today, we want to give an update on ERC. There has been some new news come out recently. Actually, we got the first bit of new news coming out in June this year, and we did a little bit of talking about that already, and we’ll give you a little update, but we, the last few weeks, July and now the last few weeks in August here, we’ve gotten a lot coming out, and so I’m sure everybody’s wondering what’s going on. Where’s your client’s money? Where’s your money, if you’re on here waiting. Are you going to get it? Should you get it? Should you return it? Should you say, I don’t want this? Should you all these different things we’re going to talk about today? Cause there’s a lot to talk about. 

But let’s start with a quick, just a little quick discussion on where we are. Everybody, if you’re on here, you’re familiar with ERC. I’ll guarantee that if you’re not familiar, you just like to see Nick talk, apparently, I assume. But ERC, obviously we went through a moratorium that started, or we were in a moratorium that started September 14th of ’23, moratorium meeting, that IRS stopped processing returns at that point in time. And we got a tax bill that was out there that showed that they were actually going to cut off ERC applications as of January 31st of ’24. That tax bill hasn’t passed. You probably all know this as well, but the Tax Relief for American Workers and Families Act of ’24, I think that was the title, and that was hanging around, passed in the House in January, and then finally came up for a vote in the Senate just recently, and it did not pass. But the way it did not pass, there’s the opportunity for that bill to come back up at any moment in time. I mean, they can bring it back to a vote at any moment in time, if I understand this correctly.

So what’s happened then, since September 14th till now? That’s what we’re going to talk about today and get an update on things. I guess we should start with some quick introductions. Nick, you want to give everybody an introduction of who you are? 

Sure. So if you haven’t seen me yet, which again, if you want to talk about ERC, which you have seen me talk—Nick Pantaleo, I’m one of the partners at Tri-Merit over the years, kind of undertaking a lot of different tasks, gone from bookkeeping to helping set up our CRM to benefits administration, and most notably as of late, kind of helped shape a lot of the technical side of our ERC program, making sure that what we’re doing is correct, and within the bounds and guidance, the IRS has laid out for us. So that’s where most of my work has kind of been lately. It’s probably where you’ve seen me before. Like I said, yeah. 

Well, thank you, Nick. Nick’s a, in my opinion, the most important person at Tri-Merit. So. Although everybody I work with is the most important person at Tri-Merit, but Nick is right there as well. I’m Randy Crabtree. I do a lot of webinars. You may have seen me speak or present or educate in the past. So thank you for being back on here again. I’m one of the co-founders of Tri-Merit. Tri-Merit early on got involved in ERC early on from a standpoint when the Consolidated Appropriations Act made changes at the end of 2020 was when we really got.

I’m excited about it because it was a great opportunity for taxpayers who were being affected. And that’s a key point, taxpayers are being affected by the pandemic to get some kind of relief. 

Alright. That’s just a quick introduction. Now let’s get into it. Nick, do you want to start with the June release where kind of the first bit of news we got from the IRS came out in June where they told us, they gave us an update finally, and we talked about this before, but let’s give a quick recap, of what that is, you know, they talked about the low and the medium and the high risk, I’ll throw it to you. And why don’t you give us an update of what happened in that June release from the IRS. 

Yeah, so everyone was waiting for a very long time to see what was going on with the moratorium, what the IRS’s plan would be. They kept saying there’d be something coming out of it. We finally got that in June. They have gone to a three tier approach, and the way that approach works is they’re looking at claims and categorizing them into one of three risks, and they were focusing on all the claims from before the moratorium. And it’s important to note that because that comes into play later with where we’re at now. But essentially they wanted to look at those claims, see what they can figure out to establish are these claims legitimate? Are they not legitimate? Obviously, they’re working on limited information, so they’re doing whatever they could. And what they came up with this three phase approach essentially is the first phase, which they said 10 to 20 percent of the claims were in this type of category that’s essentially low risk, right? The next category, I think as we said, an unacceptable level of risk, I call it a moderate risk. That’s around 60 to 70 percent of the claims that are out there from before the moratorium. And then you have another 10 to 20 percent that’s in what they’re calling a higher than acceptable level of risk or is the high risk. 

So, think of it as those three risk tiers, and that’s how the IRS is trying to address this and get these claims flowing again because, again, they were faced with essentially an impossible task. You have over a million backlogged claims, you know the fraud’s out there and it’s rampant, so how do you sit there and say, let’s get these claims going again to get the businesses that need the money, or at the same time, not give money to people who are just making fraudulent claims. And again, this is not something where you’re thinking a lot of businesses are making fraudulent claims. A lot of promoters kind of tricked them into thinking that there were qualifications that just weren’t there. 

Nope, that’s it. Taxpayers were, you know, as I said, often victims in this situation being promised money. It’s hard to turn away money, especially when, someone who, how do I say this? Basically, professional services firm out there, you know, telling you that you qualify and people can look at the, the qualification factors different, but to me and you, and I think they’re pretty cut and dry. And that’s where I think there was too much crossing the line, not even in the gray area. We were well past the gray area in a lot of claims that we saw. 

And so, okay. So that’s the history. That’s where the first bit of news that we got, in there too, they said that they were going to start sending out some refunds. They also said that they were going to start sending out some denial letters. And what, was that the one where there was 28,000 denial letters that came out in that June or is that a future one? 

So it was as a result of that June article. I don’t think they actually announced that 28,000 until later. I think that came in either July or early August, but it could have been that as well.

Okay. 

But essentially what came out of that exercise, you know, to your point, Randy, is the 10 to 20 percent that are high risk, they’re just starting to send out blanket denial letters. And so 28,000 letters is what they sent out so far. They’re saying there’s going to be more that are being sent out coming, but that’s the number that they put in writing, essentially that are going out. The flip side of that is, and this is where we get the first positive bit of news, is there’s 50,000 claims that they, you know, determined are low risk, that they’re starting to issue pings for starting in September. We use the transcript delivery system. The IRS has, or you can go look online and see what the status is, and we’re starting to see it. We have a couple of clients who we’re starting to see, and it’s populating with a 9/2 payment date. So again, first week of September is when that’s going to be planned for, but it’s starting to go out. So we are starting to see that. 

We have seen a couple of, you know, denial claims as well, but we’ll talk more on that as far as what we’re seeing with those. Just trying to get as much information as possible on what we’re seeing and what’s out there. That’s the biggest positive news, this momentum that these 50,000 claims are going out because, you know, getting that moving for some of these firms is a big deal. 

Yep. And that 50,000, if you do the math and if there’s, let’s say a million claims outstanding, which is about what their estimate was, and they’re saying 10 to 20 percent fall into that range of the good, low risk claims, that means there’s, you know, anywhere from 100 to 200,000 of those claims in that area. So we’re, you know, at that one level, the low end where 25 percent of those claims, you know, being processed now at the high end, they may have 50 percent of those claims being processed now, so there’s still more to come. So if you don’t get a check September 2nd, that doesn’t mean you’re in the high risk. That just means they haven’t got to your processing yet. And if you don’t, don’t worry, we don’t know the next date. We don’t know, you know, I think this is going to be a steady processing of claims going forward. I think they have a system in place, especially in that low risk that we should start seeing—I think, this is my personal opinion, but a pretty fairly, at least based on recently, fairly fast outflow of checks coming to those in that low risk claim. Which is good. That’s good to hear. 

Yeah. And just to elaborate real quick on that, Randy, the ones that we’re seeing, you know, the few that we’ve seen come through, they’re all Q2 and Q3 of 2020, and they’re in industries you would expect to be getting an ERC credit. So, on the low risk side, it seems like so far they’re hitting the mark, and the people we’re seeing those come through. On the flip side, well, I’ll finish that later.

Okay. And so let’s define that when you say low risk, because this is another thing IRS has come out twice. In fact, just again today, they came out with this basically news release saying, Hey, this is how you know, if you’re qualified, here’s how you know, if you don’t qualify type of thing. And so it is again, pretty straightforward, but they are really pushing this because, a couple of things. One, they feel at this point that there’s a significant number, obviously, you know, even if you pick half of that middle area and then all of that 10 to 20 percent, the high risk claims, there’s a significant, we can be close to half of the claims out there that are, you know, probably not accurate. 

And so, with that being said, What they have done, and so the, why they are pushing this information of, okay, here’s how you qualify, is because they have opened up the window of another voluntary disclosure program. And this original one came out, boy, when was that? When did the original one stop? Was it March of this year? 

Yeah, it stopped March of this year.

Okay. And the original voluntary disclosure, and this was a great opportunity for people to, and I’m going to talk about the original because then I’m going to contrast it with the current one. And Nick can chime in too, because obviously Nick is super smart, but, the original program was you could voluntarily return this money that you already received and keep 20 percent of it tax free. I mean, that was a bargain. If you’re looking at half of these claims being potentially not accurate claims or completely inaccurate claims, that was a great opportunity for these taxpayers to, you know, return that money, avoid any type of penalties or interest and be free and clear a bit. In that, it was good, the IRS received about a billion dollars back in that original version of it, but there was 2,600 claims, that was, is that right? Was it 2600? 2600 claims. That’s a small fraction. If we’re looking at potentially 500,000 claims, you know, having high risk or a decent size risk level, only 2,600 of those. 

And so because of that, what the IRS has done is they open that program back up with. A little bit of a change, a lot of bit of a change, actually. Now it is voluntary disclose, you know, to send the money back, you get to keep 15%. So you dropped, you missed that 20%. You still get a significant benefit. You have a million dollar claim, that it was not a legitimate claim. You get to keep $150,000 in this scenario. Tax free. That’s a pretty big benefit. The other caveat with this is the original voluntary disclosure was all of the quarters that were potentially eligible. Under this new program, it’s only 2021 that they’re doing this for. So it’s a smaller subset, but this is an area where if you’re an advisor to your clients, you have to go back to them, sorry, I’m going on my rant now. This is, I’ll have a couple of rants today. 

As an advisor, you know, you know, there’s clients out there that didn’t get legitimate claims. And I’ve talked to so many tax advisors that have just dropped clients because of it. They’ve advised them and they’ve dropped them. But if there’s still some out there that you’re working with, you know were not legitimate, this is my opinion, you have to go to all of them now at this point and say, this is the best opportunity you’re going to have to keep yourself out of penalties and interest and who knows what else will happen. And again, Nick, I’ll stop my rant in a minute and give it back to you. But, and, under this tax bill, if we expect a version of it to pass down the road, and so does IRS, with the January 31st cutoff, that bill also had a six year audit period, and so they’re giving themselves a lot of time to go look at these. So if you have a claim that you don’t think was legitimate, that’s six years of sleepless nights waiting to see what’s happening with this. So that’s one of the new things that just came out in the last couple of weeks, this voluntary disclosure program. Nick, I’ll hand it over to you because I’m tired of talking. 

Yeah. Well, you set up most of it. So you make my job easier! With the new program, obviously the first one was successful. It was only 2,600 applications versus it could have been probably a lot more, but it did disclose over a billion worth of credits, right? It wasn’t nothing, you know, it was a significant number they were able to reclaim. Additionally, that program, when they do it, they request the name of the firms that prepared the original filing. The IRS is gathering, that means the IRS is gathering a list of firms who are out there making more aggressive claims, right? So they’re going to take more action with that, so there is an additional aspect to that. But it’s another reason why you should do the Voluntary Disclosure Program while you can. 

Because if they do go to some of these firms who have been aggressive and let’s say they go after them and they get a list of clients, right? That may be if they get that six year audit window, that’s going to be where they go. They’re going to be looking for those firms that essentially worked with the companies they determined are aggressive. So it’s another reason that it’s just the way it loops back around. It’s all coming together with a plan, down the road, it can take some time for the IRS to get all this done, but yeah, it’s all pointing to that’s the direction we’re going. 

The other thing with the new program that you didn’t touch on as much is, you know, with it being only 2021, and we’ll talk about the denial letters, you know, at the back end of this, but they are specifically targeting what they deem high risk times and areas. And as part of that, they’re right now sending up, or they’re planning to mail out up to 30,000 letters to reverse or recapture old, improper ERC claims. So now we’re talking about letters going out, not just about pending claims, but about claims that are already paid out. That’s a significant, you know, departure from where they were, because the only way they were gonna, you know, get those things before was through a formal audit. Well, now if they’re sending out these letters, now if you’ve claimed ERC, you know, they’re essentially saying, Hey, this is step one of finding all, you know, some improper claims. We’re sending out these letters. 

If you get one of those letters, You cannot do the Voluntary Disclosure Program. So they’re prompting you now to step forward and say, Hey, if you have quarters in 2021 that aren’t eligible, you know, weren’t eligible, that were aggressive, here’s your chance. Oh, by the way, you better do it before you get a letter from us that identified you as a high risk. So it’s, you know, there is, I mean, they’re amping up the pressure in many different ways. You know, when you put everything together through this program, you know, they’re going to continue to try to give companies who want to step forward and do the right thing, the ability to do so. But if it comes down to when they have to go find it, that’s, you know, that’s not going to be a fun situation to be in as a client. And if you’re a CPA representing that client, you know, anything you can do to help prevent that, it’s a good time to do it. 

But as far as the denials, the one thing I wanted to point out with these letters and everything, as far as what we know and have seen, now we didn’t have any clients who really satisfied this, so maybe that’s why, but the denial letters we’ve gotten so far have all been tied to Q3 2021. They haven’t gone further back than that and the letters, you know, they didn’t, I, was surprised. I expected them to be maybe specific states like Florida, Texas only. We did have, you know, a couple of clients, like one in Tennessee, one in Florida, but then we had a client in California receive a letter and it was a bit surprising. I did not expect that. All three of those clients were gross receipts qualified. Now IRS doesn’t have quarterly gross receipts. They can’t determine that. So they’re looking at things like your annual gross receipts and trying to piece together this risk factor that they created. It’s not perfect. So if you do get something and you do feel you are legitimately qualified, make sure you respond to the IRS. They’ve acknowledged, hey, they think it’s going to have a high accuracy, but there’s going to be people who get denial letters who are actually qualified. That’s another piece of this, making sure you’re active with your clients. They get a letter and they are actually qualified. They can’t just bury it. You know, they have to respond to it in order to get their credit. 

And let’s talk about those denial letters, because there was a mistake on some of those denial letters, right? Where they did not indicate that there was a way to appeal this or, you know, send back additional information. Isn’t that what happened? 

Yeah, very early on, they admitted in the article, there was a first wave of those that went out, it didn’t have the appeal information in there. So if you did get a letter and you don’t see any appeals information on there, give the IRS a call. Hey, you know how to appeal this, you know, we, have letters as well, so if you needed information, we could always, you know, supply it, but for the most part, you’ve got to write an appeal. You’re replying to the address at the top of the letter you receive. So you can always do that, you know, write a letter saying we’re formally appealing this decision, and it should open up an appeal case that way, even if the letter didn’t give an option to do that. But that was one thing that the IRS did apologize for in there, that the first labels didn’t have the instructions to do that, so it’s another thing with, again, your clients have to get these, knowing if they’re qualified or not and making sure you’re acting accordingly.

And just to reiterate some things Nick said, that they, like gross receipts, they’re doing denials based on gross receipts because they see the annual gross receipts. They do not see the quarterly. And so they just make the assumption that, yeah, you know, if we calculate out annually, there wasn’t a drop or it wasn’t a 50 percent drop or a 20 percent drop. And we’re just going to project that out over each quarter. Obviously there’s some things where cyclical business happened, there could just be that, you know, where you, it has happened a lot with nonprofits where there was a huge drop in revenue and maybe it picked up later. But if you look at the annual, you know, pretty consistent maybe for the prior year, but if you looked at the quarterlies and the rules were based on quarterly, not annual, there was a drop.

Let’s talk about also, a court case that is based around this, that we want to give some props to Dan Chodan, Dan at Trout CPAs out of Pennsylvania. Dan’s been on a webinar with Nick and I in the past. Dan, as we were, was one of the earliest out there warning you that there was fraud going on in this industry. We saw it early on. Dan broke a lot of news and is still breaking a lot of news on this. So we’re going to drop in the chat, Dan’s recent, I don’t know if you say Twitter or X. I know you’re supposed to say X, but I’m still going to say Twitter. Dan’s recent Twitter post that, I think came out, it was Friday or later where Dan put this nice, big string explaining this court case, that’s going on right now, that part of the court case, not all of it, was with this annualized gross receipts and that kind of thing. So Nick, do you want to expand on this court case? 

Yeah. So it was interesting when he talked about, so it’s a law firm, ironically, who’s trying to pursue their credit. They have some shutdowns, they claim, but they also have some gross receipts. So then when you dive into the case and Dan, he does a great job laying this out. So I’m literally just summarizing what Dan laid out, which is nice. Thanks, Dan. Yeah, he talks about realistically about the, you know, the problem with gross receipts, and I say problem, you know, tongue in cheek, that sometimes gross receipts, they hit in a way that’s going to qualify you just based on circumstance. And this one, when you look at it, you can see during like, I don’t know if it was Q2 or Q3, somewhere in there, there was, during 2019, they had some massive amount of gross receipts, versus 2020, 2021, it was much lower. But that much lower amount was like their average, what it worked out to quarterly. So they must have had some giant settlement or something of that course that got paid out during Q3, and that is something that essentially determines the qualification for the future quarters. And like Randy said, with nonprofits, sometimes you get a similar thing. Nonprofits, you know, when you’re looking at gross receipts, you had to take, you know, the sale of assets without accounting for basis, you know, that’s the IRS’s guidance, so you’re looking at that, you’re going to have nonprofits who have a lot of investment income, and maybe they had a big project they needed to fund in 2019, they sold a bunch of stock, that increases their gross receipts arbitrarily, but that’s going to end up qualifying them in future quarters. 

So you get oddities like that at play that it’s hard for the IRS to look at and determine, is there really a gross receipts decline or not when you can have giant fluctuations or if you’re a cyclical business. Now, you know, as far as an actual shutdown for a law firm, it’s a tough argument and he goes into that, you know, Dan talks on a little bit, kind of same stance that we take in a law firm, I mean, you need to have really detailed, you know, data to show how much of your hours are spent actually in the courtroom in trial versus prep for a trial. Because there’s a lot of prep work that goes into that for law firms. And just because the court was closed or they couldn’t be inside the courtroom and do their practice, you know, what percent of their time or hours or anything that did that actually make up?

So you have some hard arguments there, and this is why ERC, you know, some of these is gray area or it is not very clear cut, but it’s gonna be interesting to see how that case plays out for that reason. But the main point of that is, you know, it was a good example of seeing the cyclical nature and as a businesses when not everything is, you know, perfect and in place, for gross receipts throughout the year.

Yep. And so it’ll be, I’ve been, kind of waiting for an interesting court case to come out, on this. And this one could be, I mean, there’s a lot of hinges on the outcome of this case. So pretty interesting to see if it goes straight to it, goes full to a trial or not, because obviously if it does, that’ll set precedents one way or the other. So we’ll be watching that. We’ll be watching Dan on, I can’t say it, but I’ll say it: X. I’ll have to do it again. I have to be watching Dan on Twitter because he’ll be giving us updates on that all the time. And Dan, if you’re not following Dan on Twitter, you need to be, because especially with ERC, but other things, Dan’s just a great guy. And the one thing about ERC that came out of all this is we got to be good friends with Dan. Well, so I’ll take that for sure. 

Alright. So a couple of things, Nick. They, as of now, so, you know, September 13th, they stopped processing of 23. Anything after that came in after that date, they have now started again, processing those. I think we said at the beginning, but at this point in time, they’re processing through January 31st of ’24. Are we hearing more timing on how quick the denials or, I mean, we have the idea of September 2nd that more checks are coming out. We know there’s probably going to be a steady stream of those checks coming out. They also have additional rounds of denials coming out. I think it’s just kind of a wait and see, but what do you have on that? 

Yeah, it’s, I mean, some of these numbers they’re talking about, is it like the 28,000, 50,000, you know, the 30,000 in particular, the 30,000, you know, they talk about, it’s an estimate of how many things will go out. And so thousands are going out. So some of these numbers, it’s hard to tell, has this fully been sent? I think the 28,000 disallowance letters is what has been sent out. And I think that the 50,000 is what they talk about, identified right now, but they talk about thousands more to be identified in the following weeks and paid out. So what are you going to see on a week to week? There’s no way to tell, but they mentioned, you know, continuing to try to get through thousands of these in the coming weeks as you move into fall. So you got to figure they’re trying to work through again, they have a nearly impossible task. And, you know, they have a million backlog claims. They have these ones.

But as far as the moratorium ones in particular, they do allude to it being later in the fall. When exactly it’s going to happen, I’m not entirely sure, but given the timing delay, I’m still working through pre moratorium ones as well. I’d be shocked to see moratorium claims start to get paid out and here’s my, you know, crystal ball guess, earlier than like November, early November, starting to see some of those start to shake loose. But again, it’s going to be whatever, how long it takes them to get through what they categorize as, you know, the super low risk claims and just get to those. But we’re still telling people now, I mean, if you filed in the moratorium, you know, or later, you should just set your expectations as probably going to be 2025 until you see your funds. And that was a legitimate claim. 

I would assume that as well. Alright. We do have a question that came in and some of this is just going to be our opinion, but there’s three points to this question. If the IRS determines fraud, then is the statute indefinite? Well, I’m not an expert on this, but what I recall is that if there’s fraud, then there is no statute. And so I assume the same thing will happen on this. Agree? 

Yeah, I mean that, and what is classified as fraud versus an aggressively defendable position, right? And the IRS, you know, I guess tailoring in the thing they sent out today, which they also sent out in June, just about like fraud, you know, warning signs to look out for, right? They’re trying to call out the things specifically, right? They, again, call out if you’re citing supply chain issues, make sure you’re not doing that. Make sure if you’re a large employer, you’re not, you know, claiming those wages for people who were providing services. You only get the people who weren’t providing services. Like little nuanced rules like that, they’re calling out, making sure that you’re not taking credits for those people. And they’re trying to put as much information out there, I think, so they have evidence like, okay, we tried to educate the public as much as possible. You can’t claim it in these circumstances, or for these reasons. 

And so if you just go against that and go and do that, without having a, you know, a real reason to do so, how do you actually say it’s not fraud? Is it just super aggressive? Versus some of these ones where it’s like, it’s clear cut that there’s just nothing there. We’ve seen the companies are claiming supply chain in the Q3 2021. It’s like,

Well, supply chain is another issue anyway. The IRS came out and we’ve said from day one to supply chain is almost impossible, if not impossible to qualify on. 

So all six quarters. 

Yep. And so if you do have a client that’s based on supply chain, IRS has already came out multiple times and said it, it’s not going to work. We agree with that. I mean, and I’m saying it’s not going to work 99.99 percent of the time. There’s probably that one that is going to qualify, but that’s for sure, something that you need to be aware of. The rest of this question, will they go after taxpayers? I mean, Nick kind of just alluded to that. I mean, we’ve had plenty of clients that we told them, no, you don’t qualify that we know probably went somewhere else and did claim it. And so, yes, that’s a situation where taxpayers for sure have to be concerned about. But that’s just our opinion, you know, I, assume they’ll go after taxpayers, but hopefully they look at the ones that were victims compared to the ones that just tried to get free money because they thought they could and which firms are in the crosshairs. 

Okay. So yeah, I’m not going to name firms, but. In this tax bill that hasn’t passed yet, one of the things there is you have to submit additional information on, or Nick, let me, I’ll let you do this. The firms that were preparing ERC, they had a requirement in this tax bill. And then if it does pass, the requirements were to send in additional information about, you know, how much of the revenue came from ERC and those types of things, right?

Yeah, so they were provisioning there to try to determine what is a promoter firm. That’s what they were labeling it. I think that’s the term they used. But if you got determined as one of those firms, you had, you know, higher penalties at play. You had to have essentially some disclosure of things, and they’re likely going to target those firms and what clients they work with. Again, without that legislation, they have other ways. The VDP, 2,600 have been submitted. They have a list of 2,600 submissions that list a firm on there that prepared their ERC claim. So, looking at that list alone, we don’t have that list. They haven’t disclosed that list, but that is a list that’s going to be targeted by the IRS. I mean, that’s exactly why they did it that way. 

In general, I mean, there’s lots of firms out there, but if it’s a firm that just popped up just to do ERC, those are probably on the IRS’s crosshairs, right? They’ve been, if it’s firms have been in existence, like doing work for a while versus a firm that literally just jumped on the, you know, quote unquote “gold rush” of ERC, there’s a good shot that’s going to be targeted a little bit more directly. If there was one of those firms who was running a bunch of ads on TV and on the radio, the IRS probably knows about them, right? So you do have things that, you know, you can guess at which firms they’re going to target. Now, whether those firms are doing things right or wrong. You know, some might be doing right, some might not, but if I’m the IRS, I probably have a list based on those three things or firms that are high on my priority to make sure that their clients are addressed. 

Yep, for sure. Alright. So I think we need to start wrapping up, but anything that we didn’t touch on that you wanted to address before we close this out?

I mean, the biggest thing is, again, you have the VDP that reopened, Dan was right, I was wrong, I didn’t think it would reopen, honestly, I thought it was like the IRS giving everyone a chance and that was it, but with good results, it did reopen, again, not as strong, you can’t do 2020, but the fact that it’s here, if you have 2021 quarters, that’s where they’re starting with the denial of claims as far as we can see, you have until November 22nd, so you have a decent amount of time, three months, find the clients that can use it, and use it.

Just avoid all the potential things that could come if this does come to pass. Because, we didn’t talk about this a lot, but with the moratorium partially lifting, right, they left the date that it’s only lifted through for claims through January 31st. So, what does that say? That says that they are still depending on that legislation or some very similar legislation passing. You can assume there’s going to be some giant audit revision that’s going to come into play. You can assume they’re going to try to retroactively cut off ERC. You can assume they’re going to have ways to go after the promoter, you know, the promoters. So there’s things that they’re still trying to weaponize and come into play that are going to happen. And so if you have a chance with a client, or if you are a client, you’re not sure you’re a 2021 claimer, if you’re a CPA who has clients with a 2021 claim, this is your chance. 

You know, I’ll double down on my last time. I don’t know if they’re going to reopen it again after this time, because they’re making it kind of clear now that they’re sending out mass denial letters. If you get one of those, you can’t take it. Yeah, it’s getting tough to assume that they’re going to keep giving these opportunities to businesses now. To me, this kind of seems like you’re running out of time to come forward and do the right thing.

Nope. And that’s exactly the way I wanna wrap this up. So that’s the time, it’s the Voluntary Disclosure Program. It’s the, know checks are starting to come out, know that we’ve seen September 2nd is the date that we’re seeing checks being dated. And so we’ll start seeing some things come out then. And know that denial letters are going to start coming out as well. And just because you get a denial letter doesn’t mean you don’t qualify, but obviously, especially if you get the denial letter, look deeper because the voluntary disclosure is, well, even before you get that, the voluntary disclosure is no longer available. So look ahead of time. Once you get that, that’s the, drop dead date for you being able to do the Voluntary Disclosure Program.

Alright. With that being said, You can reach out to Tri-Merit anytime with questions. I think, I assume best website is Info@Tri-Merit.com. Put your questions in there. You can go to our website, Tri-Merit.com. And there’s a chat bot where you can put information in and we can get back to you on that. There’s also a contact page. So go look there and we will, try to get back to you as soon as we can with any questions and concerns, but can’t stress enough, as Nick just said. Look at your clients, look at ones that submitted because right now IRS is, you know, just on the rough math, IRS is assuming at least 50 percent of the claims and even more potentially are not legitimate claims. And there’s still over thousands a week going in. We submitted our last claim January 31st. We stopped at that point in time. I think Nick might be, I might be wrong. Most of our claims. I think we had.

Yeah, we had two clients that came to us after the fact that are both restaurants, and we said well, you might be too late, but we’ll help you submit.

Okay. Okay. So we did help a few after the fact, but alright, again, thanks everybody. This was fun. Glad to get this information out to you and hopefully, You have a great next, whatever, six, seven weeks of second tax season of the year. Bye everybody.