House Passes COVID Bill without ERTC

POSTED BY AGC OF AMERICA ON APRIL 07, 2022  ·  SHARE THIS POST

The latest House-passed $55 billion COVID relief bill fails to reinstate Q4 2021 Employee Retention Tax Credit.

On April 7, the House of Representatives passed the Relief for Restaurants and other Hard Hit Small Businesses Act of 2022.  The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and Chairman of the House Small Business Committee Nydia Velazquez (D-NY), would provide an additional $42 billion in COVID-related relief to the Restaurant Revitalization Fund (RRF), and an additional $13 billion to a new program—the “Hard Hit Industries Award Program”—which would provide awards to small businesses in industries and sectors that were hardest hit by the pandemic, but were not eligible for the RRF or the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant Program (SVOG).

Notably absent from the legislation was any provision to reinstate the Employee Retention Tax Credit (ERTC) for the fourth quarter of 2021.  Despite the advocacy of AGC and many other stakeholders in the business and non-profit community, the latest package of COVID relief did not address the need to reinstate this credit, so that small businesses who claimed the credit in good faith last year, do not face a retroactive tax increase in 2022.

AGC will continue to look for legislative vehicles to address this problem. 

If you have any questions, please contact Matthew Turkstra at matthew.turkstra@agc.org.