While Not Violating The Letter Of The PPP Law, It Sure As Heck Destroyed Its Spirit

One of the reasons both the PPP and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan ran out of funds, is the program was too underfunded to begin with to deal with the scope of the problem slamming small businesses in this country, and Nancy Pelosi's refusal to extend them once this became obvious to the politicians without her unrelated priorities being met.

The second reason is because the system got played. For Example - Restaurant Business: While small operations struggle, chains land PPP loans

Why? Well banks certainly found it easier to administer and fund a single large loan to one borrower rather than many small ones, so that's what they focused on. After all, while the loans are guaranteed, they're only going to make about 1% on the transaction, so why work to process thousands of small loans when you can write one big check?

Many banks serving small businesses didn't even get their processing systems up to process small business applications when the program had funds - I'm looking at you Comerica.

So yep, my clients needing 50k which could keep their payrolls and businesses just afloat enough to survive this are told there's no funds available and they are out of options to survive at this point - and they still have to pay their quarterly payroll taxes now, not to mention the rent which is still due.

Meanwhile, the Kennedy Center got a bailout of $25 million specially designated for them outside of the PPP/EIDL program - and laid off most of their workforce, and chain restaurants were able to game the system and got $10-$20 million a piece.

FUTA - The Most Complicated Way To Pay The Feds $42, Ever

FUTA apparently stands for "F U TAxpayer!".

Since I'm a single employee business, namely myself, I get the joy of paying not just state unemployment taxes, which I can't claim or ever use as it is not like I can fire or lay myself off.

I also have to pay annually to the Feds the FUTA tax, which is short for the Federal Unemployment Tax Act, a tax the Feds use to buttress states that need more unemployment funds. Yep, you don't know it if you're an employee but your employer is, on top of everything else in terms of taxes and deductions, sending in at last $42 and possibly more depending on their state, for each and every employee.

The FUTA calculation is quite convoluted, starting at 6% of the first $7,000 of an employees wages or $420, and it gets credited down in general to .6% or $42 per employee depending on the calculations - and that's where the fun begins. Of course they can't do a simple form with (total number of employees x total amount of employee $wage up to 7,000 per employee) x .006. That would be too easy.

The form to do so instead is Form 940. Get a load of that beautiful form, and the lengthy instructions.

It's a great cure for insomnia.

The problem is if you follow the rather convoluted instructions and the form itself you will likely pay more tax than you should.

In short, after tearing my hair out as the numbers wouldn't work when following the instructions, I broke down and called an accountant friend and asked about it, as applying the credit calculations for prompt payment of state unemployment taxes etc led me to paying more tax which is kinda counter-intuitive.

In short, for a single member company you basically ignore the instructions and steps on the form and just enter in the baseline $42 for a single employee and don't even try and apply any credits or calculations.

Sheesh. Hours spent in frustration just to comply with a rather stupid requirement to send them a check for $42.00.