PPP Round Two and a Word of Caution

Happy Friday, everybody. Glad to see you all again. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve made one of these videos because as a lot of you already know I was diagnosed with COVID 19, just a few days before Christmas. So I really appreciate all of you who reached out and checked on me and my wife during the break. We’re doing much better now, but I really do appreciate all the thoughts, the well-wishes, the prayers. They do mean a lot. They didn’t go unnoticed, so thank you. Wanted to talk a little bit today, on today’s video, about something that’s, I think, coming up in the near future that I think you all need to be aware of, and that is this second round of PPP funding. We’ve started to get notices that this second round of funding is about to open up for some small businesses, which is great.

And it is a much needed form of relief for some of these small businesses that have been hurting through this pandemic. But I did want to make sure that all of you out there that do own small businesses are aware that even though the application process for these PPP loans is relatively simple and straightforward, it’s usually just a one or two-page application, that doesn’t mean that you can be lackadaisical when you’re filling in that data, okay. We have several cases that we’re working right now, where our clients have either been indicted or are about to be indicted for this PPP fraud, because they were less than honest when they filled out that application.

So when you’re filling out those applications and it’s asking you things like your revenue in 2019, or your revenue in 2020, because a lot of times that is a requirement for this PPP loan as a significant drop in revenue, you can’t just fudge those numbers. You can’t just estimate what you think there to be. Because if you put a number down on that application, you had better be able to back that up with receipts or invoices or sales logs, because if you can’t, you’re going to find yourself in trouble. That’s where most of these indictments have started is they look at the numbers, whether it’s the number of employees you put down, what the amount of your payroll per year is, or the amount of gross receipts for the previous years where these company owners have simply either made those numbers up or have hedged them up or down, depending on what they think is going to get them the most PPP relief.

Please don’t do that because if you do, you could find yourself the target of a federal investigation. If you feel like you already are being looked out because of something you did in the first round of PPP loan applications, or if you have any questions about this second round that’s coming up, whether or not you can answer a question in a certain specific way, please feel free to reach out and ask me. I’m happy to walk you through it to the best of my knowledge. I’m happy to forward your question along to somebody who’s more knowledgeable, whether it’s a CPA or a tax attorney, I’m happy to get you in touch with some of the experts that I know in those areas. But either way, ask somebody before you fill out that application. Because the very last thing I want is for you to have to come and hire me, because now you’ve been indicted by the federal government for PPP loan fraud, which we have seen and will continue to see as these fundings go out.

So with all that being said, I really hope everybody had a great holiday. I really hope that the start of 2021 has been awesome for everybody out there. I look forward to this year, look forward to these weekly talks with you guys. As always, if you have any questions or any topics or ideas that you want to see me cover a video, please reach out, let me know via email. My email is at the end of this video. I typically don’t respond to YouTube comments because that can be a mess. So shoot me an email, it’s always the best way to get ahold of me. Let me know what you’d like to see me cover. I’m happy to answer any questions that you might have, and I look forward to talking to you next week.