Paducah CPA: New Stimulus Bill will Look Different

As the coronavirus pandemic continues, Congress is negotiating a new stimulus bill to help Americans get through the tough economic period. A Paducah CPA is weighing in on what the new legislation might look like in the end.

Paducah Certified Public Accountant Dean Owen spoke to the Greg Dunker Show Tuesday morning, giving his best guess at what form the new bill will take when it is finally signed into law. He said there will likely be some key differences from the $2 trillion bill passed earlier this year.

"It looks like there's gonna be another round of stimulus checks, but this time they'll be more targeted and go to lower income families," Owen said. "The folks making $40,000 a year or less are the one's that's really been hit hard by this, and I think that's what they're gonna target."

Owen said it looks as though the new bill will also provide $1,200 per dependent child for families. 

As far as business owners are concerned, Owen said small businesses who took advantage of the Small Business Administration's Paycheck Protection Program will likely see blanket forgiveness of up to $150,000 for loans they received to cover payroll expenses.

"For business owners, they're looking at blanket forgiveness where basically we just self certify that we used the money on payroll for any loans under $150,000, which was the vast majority." Owen said. He said due to the high volume of loans doled out as part of the program, it would be costly and time-consuming to process the paperwork for each and every loan.

"There's really no way for the SBA to manage that kind of loan volume forgiveness. So I think we're gonna see some blanket forgiveness on that, which will make things much easier and save small business owners a lot of money, because those forms they've got for loan forgiveness are really complicated." He said.

Owen said Republicans are also pushing for blanket liability protection for businesses that open back up so owners cannot be sued for coronavirus related reasons as long as they acted reasonably. 

One major sticking point between Republicans and Democrats has been the $600 weekly enhanced unemployment benefit that millions of out of work Americans have been receiving as part of the previous stimulus bill. Owen said the latest round of spending will most likely come with a significant reduction to this benefit.

"There's gonna be some kind of reduction in the enhanced unemployment benefits. The Republicans are saying $200 enhancement, the Democrats are saying $600 in enhancement. Most likely they get to the end game and they split the difference." He said.