The employee retention credit has been a great program for businesses that qualify. However, I’ll forewarn you there are a lot of companies now who are looking to do these credits and take a percentage of what they get for businesses as their fee, usually in the neighborhood of about 20 to 25%.
Watch out; we’ve seen a lot of scammers in the industry right now who are telling everyone that they qualify without really investigating if these companies truly qualify for the employee retention credit. Let’s say that a company approaches you, and they apply for the employee retention credit, and you get $10,000, and they charge you $2,500 to file all the information.
First, they’ll want their money without waiting for the I.R.S. to give you yours. Second, even if you got your money from the I.R.S., if you come to be audited on the employee retention credit two years from now, where do you think these companies are going to be? Are they going to back this up and show proof of how you actually qualified? And even if they provided information about that or some guarantee, that doesn’t mean you are off the hook.
If you got the employee retention credit and you did not qualify properly, the I.R.S. is coming after you, not that company who did it. Yes, they may take action against a company that does this for many people and leaves town. But I promise you that company will be long gone before the I.R.S. gets anywhere near them. So please make sure you understand the clarification of who qualifies for that credit. And by all means, talk to your accountant.
As a CPA, we prepared all of our clients, employee retention credits as this happened in 2021. If you have not applied for the employee retention credit and believe you may have qualified, have a CPA prepare those returns for you. That will give you added protection because that CPA will probably not risk their entire career to get you an employee retention credit that you do not deserve. They’ll also probably make sure that you are taken care of and help you later on if the I.R.S. were to question any of it. So take a look at the actual rules. We have some prior videos about the employee retention credit. You can reference those to make sure that they do thoroughly qualify.
I’m Donna Bordeaux from Calculated Moves. Please follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Check out our blogs and our websites from the link below. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell to be notified when we post. To contact me, email me at donna@calculatedmoves.com.
Donna Bordeaux, CPA with Calculated Moves
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