Employee Retention Tax Credit | Thousands Overpaid Billions
Should Government Keep Your Overpayment Or Give It Back?
(You Overpaid During Covid, Why Not Get The Extra Money Back?)
It’s Your Money – Get Your Money Back
Small businesses run by middle class entrepreneurs are America’s lifeline – the backbone of our economy. Small businesses are being assaulted as never before. COVID restrictions wiped out thousands upon thousands of mom-and-pop shops, restaurants, factories, and other enterprises. Now runaway inflation, recession, skyrocketing interest rates, and the difficulty of finding reliable employees are giving small businesses another gut punch.
During COVID, to lessen the load (on itself), Congress changed the employment tax laws. Consequence: Your business overpaid employment taxes in 2020 and 2021. You paid too much. Should the government keep the extra money you overpaid?
Why Did You Overpay?
You overpaid because you were told to pay – by your payroll service, accountant, CPA, bookkeeper, MBA. Millions of small businesses overpaid billions of tax dollars. Is it wrong to pay what you owe and not a penny more, not a penny less?
Since when does your business pay more than your vendors require? If you mistakenly overpaid a supplier, shouldn’t you get the overpayment back?
Taxes Are The Congressional Hammer
Congress uses the tax code to entice, tempt, influence tax-paying businesses to do what Congress wants. In big ways and small ways, Congress never stops tinkering with the tax code so that you will dance to their tune. When your biggest tool is a hammer, is it ridiculous to think that everything starts looking like a nail . Oh c’mon!
Taxes are the favorite Congressional hammer. Unemployment from the COVID panic and pandemic was the nail. Could Congress resist whacking away with its most powerful tool? Congress changed the tax law.
What The Tax Credit Is, Really
Congress offered small businesses a deal: We want you to keep your people employed. Keep paying them. Keep paying their benefits. Even if they don’t work. Even if governmental orders shut down your business. Even if your revenue falls off the cliff and crumbles.
Congress said if you do these things, we will adjust your employment taxes. If small businesses like you agree to dance to the Congressional tune, you won’t have to pay employment taxes. In fact, we’ll give you additional money back to help with your payroll.
And, if you already overpaid employment taxes under the new law, you can have the extra money back. You can get back a refund for what you overpaid. Congress said, “Do what we ask and we will give you your overpaid tax dollars.”
Why Did Congress Give The Employee Retention Tax Credit?
Simple. Congress did not want to pay unemployment money to your employees. Congress did not want you to lay off or fire your employees. Because you did what Congress asked you to do, you get a tax benefit, the Employee Retention Tax Credit, ERTC. It is a tax law change by the government that benefits only the small businesses that did the work and paid the costs that Congress wanted to avoid.
Congress Turned Small Businesses Into America’s Unemployment Agency
Hundreds of thousands of small businesses went bust during the COVID. Millions of Americans were thrown out of work. Millions of Americans applied for government unemployment benefits. They broke the system. The Depression Era unemployment insurance system was overwhelmed by COVID. How much worse could it have been if you laid off your people too? Could you have restarted from scratch? Would you even want to? ERTC is how Congress paid you to be their national unemployment agency. Is it ridiculous to think that if Congress wanted you to be their national unemployment agency that you would get some tax incentives to play that role?
Does Congress ever give anything away for free? Does Congress ever make anything easy? You overpaid your employment taxes because Congress changed the rules. Your tax advisors did not notice and so you paid too much. Should Congress keep the extra money? Are you surprised that, since the pandemic is officially yesterday’s news, and since you already did your part, now Congress wishes to keep your overpayment? Isn’t that par for the course?
All small business owners know that their biggest tax nightmare is Employment Taxes. Failure to pay unemployment taxes, FICA, FUTA, and the rest leads to criminal prosecution. But now the shoe is on the other foot. Congress changed the rules and you paid too much. Period.
Now they want to keep the extra. And if you do not ask for your money back, they will keep it. You must claim your overpayment quickly, by their rules, or your opportunity will be lost forever. The time to get your money back, your overpaid taxes under the new tax rules, is quickly running out.
Do you like to overpay?
Do you enjoy being cheated?
Do you like deals where you perform and the other guy scrams?
Can you stay in business by allowing others to walk all over you?
Can you thrive, grow, serve your clients, your customers, your team members and overpay your taxes too?
Why would you let your business be their doormat? Why would you leave your hard-earned money to a bully because you couldn’t be bothered to pick it up or even ask for it back?
Imagine the return of a few hundred thousand up to several million dollars of tax overpayments. Could that make a difference in your personal or business life? Do you think the government knows better than you do how to spend your money?
A Safe, Secure, Reliable Solution
Over 5000 small businesses who overpaid. About $1.5 billion of overpaid taxes claimed. More companies everyday have benefited from tax preparation services provided by a company created to serve this need of small businessmen and women. Carrier-Robins. Tax Preparation Services from coast-to-coast.
Most of our overpaying taxpayers relied on CPA advice to keep them informed. They counted on payroll tax services to let them know what was happening. Based on this advice thousands of tax paying businesses overpaid millions in employment taxes.
It’s understandable that business owners would rely on their CPAs and the traditional, conventional, antiquated, unregulated professional tax preparers, as they always have. Accountants are good at following the numbers. CPAs, Bookkeepers, Accountants are number-based. If there’s a numeric solution, they seize on that numeric solution and they are done.
It’s the same old problem I mentioned before. When all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. With the Employee Retention Tax Credit, there is a numbers test to see if you’ve overpaid your employment taxes. The numbers test is easy. It’s straightforward, it’s obvious. And CPAs love it. The problem is that the numbers test misses most overpayments by small business. Congress and the Internal Revenue Service are playing chess. But your CPA is stuck on checkers.
That’s why we have dozens of lawyers, practicing attorneys to perform your tax preparation services. If you know anything about lawyers, you know that they dig, dig, dig. Lawyers never accept your first answer. Period. Lawyers are bound and determined to analyze, dig, question, substantiate. They are annoying. But thorough.
The “Lawyer Hammer” is to look at all of the facts, read all of the law and regulations After the research is done, the lawyer way is to dive deeply with the business owner into the unique facts and circumstances of each individual business.
To a CPA, a business is a numbers volcano. If the CPA or the bookkeeper can figure out the figures, they are done. However, to an attorney, a business is much, much more. There are all the various aspects of each business. There is marketing, sales, production, service, training, warranty work, additional sales.
Every business lives in a great interlocking web of activity. There are customers, there are suppliers, there are all sorts of other folks, other businesses with whom you operate.
From landscaping services to auto detailing shops to defense contractors to medical practice groups of cardiac surgeons. Each business entrepreneur lives his or her own unique story.
Numbers driven analysis has its place. Numeric analysis is very useful, no doubt. But if that were all it took to run a business, to be successful, why aren’t CPAs and MBAs running the show? CPAs and MBAs can be useful, skillful technicians, but that’s it. And that’s why all the MBAs and CPAs are not out there running businesses. They mostly work for you, the entrepreneur.
Attorneys, like you, must see the bigger picture. Attorneys cannot afford tunnel vision. Attorneys must eliminate the blind spots. Make no mistake, the most common reason that clients have stated for #1 overpaying their taxes in the first place and #2 letting the government get away with keeping the overpaid tax is that they were told to do so by the number crunchers.
If revenue did not shrink enough, says the CPA, government keeps all the overpayment. No matter how undeserved or illegal because you didn’t even ask for the refund. No follow through. Let us be clear, MBAs and CPAs are wonderful folks doing important work, but you can’t use a hammer to paint a house. Period. To accomplish the goal, you need the right craftsman using the right tools to get the best results.
Congress expected that you would keep your doors open. One way or the other, Congress expected that sometimes you would have decreases, massive decreases in revenue. But Congress also understood that sometimes you would find ways to generate revenue even if governmental orders shut you down, fully or partially. That’s why when Congress changed the tax laws and if your business suffered a full or partial suspension of its lines of business due to governmental orders, Congress offered employment tax relief.
Surgeons prohibited from elective surgery who turned to taking on trauma cases are eligible.
High tech companies selling generic mass market volumes of low-end memory chips instead of their highly engineered, Top Secret military black boxes are eligible.
Restaurants closing their dining areas but still bringing in money by delivery are eligible.
And there are thousands more individual cases in our tax preparation work. Every i dotted, every t crossed, backed up by an unequalled repository of governmental orders from all 50 states. Federal, state, county, city, local school boards, townships, county health officials, sheriff and police orders. All of these are used to make sure that you receive your overpayment back. Our exhaustive methods leave no stone unturned. Make sure you get every penny back that you overpaid by error or by mistake because you were told to do so.
Responsible tax preparers do not offer Pie in the Sky. Is it responsible to inflate overpayment claims or the potential for recovery? Is it right to risk the good name, business, and personal reputation of America’s small business owners? You can count on our tax preparation services because our tax preparation services are based on years of evaluating fact patterns, proximate cause, impact, and consequence. Applying the law to specific facts of each unique situation is what we’ve been doing for decades.
Employing this special expertise in the tax preparation arena, while not legal services, engages highly developed methodologies that MBAs and CPAs simply do not claim to match. Is that any surprise? Would you trust a lawyer to keep your books? Do you think that Perry Mason would make a good accountant? If you saw Matlock coming at you with a calculator, you should run away!
That’s why we hire and use bookkeepers, MBAs, CPAs, and accountants. We need experts to crunch the numbers, but that is not enough. You already know the limitations of CPAs and accountants. Those limitations are why you overpaid your taxes in the first place. Those are the folks discouraging you from getting your money back.
Find out quickly and easily just how much you overpaid. How much of your money is still in the IRS vault right now? It is simple and easy to get started. Simply call. “Rough and ready” estimates can be determined promptly.
And then, when we have analyzed your payroll records, your profit and loss statements, Payroll Protection Plan and other records, and most importantly, interviewed you to determine your unique facts, we will reach the precise overpayment amount. Not a penny more, not a penny less.
Look in your e-mail inbox. You’ve probably got at least half a dozen emails promising $26,000 per employee. Hogwash! $26,000 per employee is the absolute maximum you might recover. And you may have overpaid that maximum amount. But experience born of 5000 cases and over $1.5 billion in reclaimed overpayments suggests that that number is not likely.
Is a good idea to leave money on the table? Are you happy to overpay your taxes and not get the refund? Is it fair for the government to hold on to your money? Should your team of bookkeepers, MBAs, and CPAs lead you down the primrose path? Wouldn’t it be worse to give up the safety, security, and reliability of a team of attorneys providing tax preparation services?
It’s Easy To Get Started, Call Today
616-361-8400
david@davidcarrierlaw.com Easy!
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