Thank you for joining us. With ther viewers Paycheck Protection Program is. Stimulus was a form of that the treasury and Small Business administration started lending to borrowers, Small Businesses, back in april. They plan to forgive a lot of these loans as long as the funds were used to fund payroll and other qualifying expenses. Host how much money was lent and what types of businesses received the money . Guest in the end there were 525 billion lent out. More than 5 million recipients of the loans got some of the funds. All kinds of businesses. Very Small Businesses, some larger businesses as well. The ones who filed for bankruptcy were a lot of restaurants, hotels, and businesses in the Accommodation Services industry. Host you wrote the total amount lent to companies who went bankrupt is between 220 Million Dollars and 509 million. For thernment range amount. Half of the firms identified by the journal have filed for bankruptcy since august. Dozens of recipients who come from a state where the pandemic is a primary reason for entering bankruptcy. Were they more specific . The companies that i spoke with, some cited specifically the statemandated lockdown. Especially events spaces, one of the main examples have in my article. Event space into locations shut down after 20 years of successful operation. Onsaid the statewide bans large gatherings killed his business. Is a similar condition for the hotels, restaurants who cant operate at full capacity. That seems to be the biggest issue. There are other costs associated with the pandemic, like ppe equipment and so on and so forth. There are other expenses that businesses have to consider. That filedusinesses for bankruptcy, what happened with the money they received from the government for the Paycheck Protection Program . Is it forgiven . Do they have to pay it back . Guest keep in mind that it can be forgiven. They are looking into that now for a lot of companies who applied to have those funds forgiven. In bankruptcy court, what happens to the loan is it is an unsecured claim which has lower repayment priority than a secured claim, which may be backed by property or things like that. Who is in owner charge of a bankruptcy negotiation will go to their creditors and have a conversation and come up with a repayment plan. The repayment plans are almost always far left of the original value of the loan. If the government decided not to forgive the loans, for example if the company didnt use funds appropriately, they would still only be able to recover pennies on the dollar and most cases. Host we want to hear from our viewers on this topic. Viewers in the Eastern Central 202 f the country, 7488000. Mountain pacific, 202 7488001. If you received ppp funding, 202 7488002. We want to hear you, if it helped you stay afloat, or if you come alike in the story, had to file for bankruptcy. You write about the government watchdog group. The watchdog counted tens of thousands of companies that received ppp loans for which they appear to have been ineligible. Corporations created after the pandemic began, those who exceeded workforce size limits, 500 employees or fewer, or those payers. Eady owed to tax how did this happen . Guest you know, you have to look at the underwriting process, which is not traditional. The actual loans. The Small Business administration and the treasury say that they will guarantee the loans as long as theyre used for the right funds. When this program came out it was quick. They wanted to get as much money to as many businesses as possible to stave off immediate failures. The underwriting process was a piece of paper that you fill out and are self certifying. Companies were allowed to put whatever they wanted and there wasnt a Fraud Prevention framework in place prior to making the loans. Now that the government has had a little more time to review who the recipients are, it is becoming clear there are thousands of funds who probably should not have applied for the money and received it and they will have to go through some kind of clawback process. That will play out over the following weeks and months. Host do you know what that process will look like . Guest we will have to see. [laughter] host mike, you are up first. Good morning. Am a cpa in california. There has been a lot of talk taxability of the the forgiveness of the ppp loans. Originally they said they were not going to be taxable when they were forgiven. And then it turns out through some Internal Revenue code well, the forgiveness of the debt is not taxable, but the deductions, the expenses that you spend the money for will not be deductible. Then it becomes a matter of, win is this actually taxable when is this actually taxable . Most say it will be taxable when the loan is forgiven. Now the irs apparently has issued a notice saying, well, we thesethat maybe deductions arent deductible when you got the money, not when it is forgiven, even if you dont know if its going to be forgiven. The thing that irritates me the most is at the beginning of this process when different congressmen, when it was explained to them that this money as it turns out is going to be taxable, they said no, we will need to change the law because that was not our intent. Anything toing protect businesses or give them hard and fast rules on this. The other thing i have to say about this as there are some businesses that probably got the. Oney and didnt make it is that going to be taxable to them . Forget about paying the money back, but are they going to have to pay tax on money they dont have any more . I dont see a single congressperson seeming to be concerned about this, when it was unanimous, all of the republicans and democrats were all for the ppp loans. When it comes down to how tricky and difficult and challenging this is, there is no help whatsoever. Host lets let Shane Shifflett weigh in. Outsideax is a little of my field. Thats a great story idea. You bring up an interesting point about how legislators terms really think about of bankruptcy. The underlying law doesnt say anything about companies who file for bankruptcy. The Small Business administration has fought, essentially, to disqualify forowers from qualifying ppp funds while in bankruptcy. We have seen all kinds of interesting maneuvers from companies who have filed for bankruptcy, come out of bankruptcy, receive the funds, and filed for bankruptcy again, and that is basically ok. The proposed legislation, there is modifications to the ppp address att will least some of the issues around bankruptcy and codify that, but i dont know exactly how the tax issues will be treated this time, but you bring up a great point. Host what are some Company Names that received ppp funding that had more than 500 employees who have should not have received the money . Guest i dont have that list in front of me to look at, but when you look at the ppp database there is no one in there who says they have more than 500 employees. You have to look at different sources of information to find out if they have more employees than that. We dont have a full list yet. Host what types of businesses were hardest hit that ended up filing for bankruptcy . Guest definitely restaurants, hotels, Energy Companies were surprisingly in their but that is likely to do more with the economy and the way that the Energy Industry is doing with oil prices and stuff. Manufacturers, companies that mightve contracted with boeing, stuff like that. Accommodationthe Services Industry that was hit the hardest so far, just by the sheer fact that they cant operate at full capacity, and in many cases cant open their doors. If you look at event venues for concerts essentially, they are looking at a full year of zero revenue almost. They have no timetable for reopening and when we can have concerts again. There is definitely lots of businesses on the brink, and we are seeing the tip of the iceberg in these bankruptcy filings. Host jerry, east brunswick, new jersey. Caller how are you . Thanks for picking up my call. I believe that in order for these Small Businesses to i am 82. I am not in business but i spent 50 years in the corporate world. In order for them to survive the Small Businesses have to get federal support. They have to get federal support. The constitution, we the people, most of the politicians who are elected come from extreme wealth, extreme wealth. They have no idea how the hardships are. In my community a number of companies have gone out. Two of my gym have declared bankruptcy. The restaurants cant survive. The politicians, lets take the majority out of the senate. He has beenrassley, there long time. Lets take pelosi. They dont understand the people who own the Small Businesses are really suffering. In these current negotiations, is Congress Talking about more money for the Paycheck Protection Program . Guest i dont have the exact figures on what the next planned Paycheck Protection Program will be. The democrats have about 2 billion in stimulus they want to pass and republicans have 650 billion the last i looked in early november. Host 2 trillion for democrats s. Guest 2 trillion for democrats and six under 50 billion for republicans. Republicans are looking at a hair more than what was given out to Small Businesses. Host charles in buffalo, new york. Good morning. Caller good morning. A question, in his Opening Statement a few moments ago the only used noticed he the 500 employees size, he did not use dollar value. Standard reflected in dollar value and number of employees . Why did you leave that out . How much money we do cite how much money was went to the companies. I dont know off the top of my head. Again, we are looking at what the filers iny the paperwork they filed stored by the sba. We have what industry, if they were veteran owned. A lot of this information is also optionally filled out and is incomplete in many cases. Host william and jefferson township, pennsylvania. Caller hello. I vote republican, and i think this stimulus for companies is businesses for the drip off the government, ok . I dont think businesses that because of this pandemic and everything they should be allowed to fail, i think. It will clean out the weak from the ones and the ones who are strong will survive. Host can i ask you to define for our viewers the difference between the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic InjuryDisaster Loan Program . Guest the ppp loans are forgivable as long as theyre used to support jobs, primarily what they are designed to do, dickie people on the payroll. It isnt really for the benefit of the business to keep people on the payroll. It isnt really for the benefit of the business. The disaster loans have more of the typical underwriting process, there is more of a review of their financial state, and of the loans are often for much smaller amounts than the ppp loans. Host to learn more about Shane Shiffletts reporting on the Paycheck Protection Program, you can go to wsj. Com. Cspan washington journal. We discussed information for you. South carolina democratic congressman on this week democratic election, including his own. Ohio republican congressman Warren Davidson on Election Results and the u. S. Response to covid19. Watch cspan washington journal live at 7 00 a. M. Eastern, friday morning. Comments,th facebook text was just and tweets. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] coming up live on friday, the hearing on the a u. S. Mission in afghanistan. 12 30, Vice President mike pence is in canton, georgia, for Campaign Event for georgette republican senators Kelly Loeffler and david perdue for the Runoff Election in january