Eventually she got through, only to be told she now owes nearly $2,000. (Over 85 percent of PPP loans were for under $50,000 loans over $1 million made up just 0.4 percent of the total.) But having to pay the money back will be a hardship for these small business owners who are still trying to climb their way out of a deep financial hole.Īfter Gray was repeatedly unable to submit her forgiveness application earlier this year, she threatened to sit in the Citizens Bank corporate office until someone talked to her. A $5,000 PPP loan is “like a rounding error,” he said. “The amount is so small, I’m surprised would even do anything with that,” said Daryl McLinden, managing director at finance and accounting firm TMG Consulting, who has been focused on helping clients navigate PPP loans. The loans are all under $10,000, a tiny slice of the $800 billion program. Three other small business owners told The Intercept they have similarly been notified by their different lenders that they shouldn’t have received the amount they were approved for and that they’ll have to pay back the difference. Gray is not the only person whose bank has reversed its stance on how much PPP money they should be eligible for and demanded repayment. Citizens did not respond to a request for comment. The difference won’t be forgiven, and she’ll have to pay it back. Instead, a bank representative later told her on the phone, she was in fact only eligible for $3,837. It wasn’t a huge sum compared the multimillion-dollar loans some corporations received, but Gray had enough income to pay her mortgage and cover her health care costs.īut in May 2021, Gray received a shocking email from Citizens explaining that no, she shouldn’t have received $5,800. In May 2020, Citizens approved her for a $5,800 PPP loan. #Ppp loans large companies fullThe bank wanted her full 2019 tax return to determine eligibility, which she provided. So someone from her bank walked her through it and told her what she was eligible to receive. “I had no idea what to ask for,” she said. If used mostly on payroll, with a small portion on other expenses like rent or equipment, they would be entirely forgiven otherwise they’d be converted to loans with 1 percent interest.īut Gray found the application difficult to parse as a sole proprietor. Her bank, Citizens Bank, kept sending her emails prompting her to apply for a loan from the Paycheck Protection Program, which Congress passed early in 2020 to issue relief money to small business owners in order to keep workers employed and companies from shuttering. “I had no business, nothing for a number of months,” she said. But when the Covid-19 pandemic began, her income completely dried up. Companies have until May 7 to return funds "in good faith.For 24 years, Ericka Gray has owned her own mediation and arbitration business in Arlington, Massachusetts, helping organizations navigate workplace disputes. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin warned companies last week that they could suffer consequences if they could not certify that they were facing economic injury. The SBA and the Treasury Department issued new guidance this week, clarifying that the loans were not intended for companies with access to the equity market. (An entire list of which public companies received PPP loans is available here, based on SEC filings analyzed by FactSquared, a political and media data firm) Over a million businesses large and small applied under the loose guidelines, which said companies must have fewer than 500 employees and must be able to demonstrate economic injury due to the coronavirus shutdowns.īut after the $350 billion of initial funding started to run dry - and publicly traded companies with more access to funds started making headlines for receiving government assistance while smaller businesses were left out - some companies had second thoughts.
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