What are the forms and related timelines to claim the ERTC stimulus money owed to my company?

ERTC Credits? They don’t get a lot of press attention for whatever reason. But they’re an incredibly important and incredibly important tool to stay in business. ERTC funds are still out there for businesses that continue to be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic that we’ve all lived through here.

As you might know, we do a lot of work in this ERTC stimulus space. There’s a lot of rules around what it takes to get and claim the money owed to you. There are probably 200 plus pages of IRS Guidance on this stuff, but it isn’t even all in the same place! Having worked with literally hundreds of companies in this regard, there are a few common questions that come up and I’ve answered them below.

ERTC Credits? They don’t get a lot of press attention for whatever reason. But they’re an incredibly important and incredibly important tool to stay in business that’s out there for businesses that continue to be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic that we’ve all lived through here.

The first question we get is how long does it take to get my money? What forms do I have to use?

And the question is with everything this government-related is it depends and the reason it depends is there are different turnaround times for different forms that we file that you’re eligible for. the most common form that we’re following is called an amended 1941 and 1941 X. That’s when we go back in time and we amend the forms in order to capture those tax credits we didn’t previously capture in previous periods because we qualified for the employee retention credit.

When we do those amended forms, we have to print them out to sign them, we have to mail them in to the IRS as certified mail. Somebody at the IRS quite literally has to open up an envelope and they have to scan it into their computer system. They have the process of check, they have to cut a check that they mail it to you, They have to confirm that the address that they have a file is the address that’s on your 9041, which you know, that’s a whole other issue. Anyway, it’s an incredibly manual process.

These returns the IRS keeps pushing their deadline back, they keep pushing that deadline back when we first started doing a lot of these at the beginning of the year. I also said take 3 to 4 months. then by the end of the first quarter and said, well maybe you know, 3 to 6 months. And then at the end of the second quarter they’re saying yeah it’s probably six months but we’re not really sure and now we’re in the third quarter and they’re saying well it might take as long as nine months, maybe a year, we’re not too sure.

IRS is saying, We’re overwhelmed you know on the amended returns and are gonna take a little longer because of their paper forms.

Form 941

The next most common form that we file is what’s called just you know, we incorporate these credits into the current quarters 941. And when we do that we have an electronic file versus a paper file, that’s around the time is much quicker. That is normally a matter of weeks. Typically kind of about 8 to 10 weeks-ish. Same situation the I. R. S. Will mail you a check. And but the key thing is we have to electronically file those forms and if you do your own 1941, you definitely want to use an electronic payment provider because we want to get away from that mail system.

Form 7200

Another form we file and you’re less common because IRS has a kind of a hard time processing them. But we do file is what’s called Form 7200. And that’s an advance. That’s when we file in advance at the end of the quarter. And we have two facts that one in right? now there’s a third way to file for this. Those advances according to the I. R. S. Take about 4 to 6 weeks. However, we’ve seen substantial delays, substantial delays in the I. R. S. Being able to process these 7200 forms. And you know, to our frustration, our client’s frustration, we’ve seen many 72 forms 7200 get filed but the I. R. S. Wasn’t able to get to them in time. And then that created glitch in their system and they said, hey sorry, we can’t process which is super frustrating, but if we’re able to early enough in the quarter and you have to do it super early, the essence of time to process them before the quarter closes.

Summary

Few different ways to file depending on your situation. Your check is also based on how you file and it could be as quick as six weeks to get your ERTC stimulus check and it could be as long as you know many months. I hope that’s helpful.

-Brad