News
Farm Bureau says good changes to PPP in both stimulus bills
An American Farm Bureau economist says the proposed changes in Congress to the Paycheck Protection Program should make it more appealing and useful for farmers and ranchers. Veronica Nigh tells Brownfield Ag News that one of the biggest changes proposed with the Small Business Administration program in the Senate HEALS Act would qualify a lot more farmers, “The HEALS Act would start using gross receipts instead of net profits for the payroll that you could use to qualify for this loan. Of course, that should make a huge difference for those folks who are self-employed.”
She says the HEALS Act adds even more forgiveable expense to the non-labor costs, “The big selling point of the PPP is that if you use 60% of those funds for payroll and then the rest of the funds for these approved non-labor costs, the loan’s forgivable.”
Nigh says the House-passed HEROES Act eliminates the rule that 60% of the loans have to be used on labor expenses, “That’s a big one. If you get a 100-thousand-dollar PPP loan and then you want to use all of it to pay your equipment rental, your building rental, the interest on your mortgage payment for your business, the HEROES Act, you could do that.”
Night says the Heroes Act would also allow the loans to be used for 24 weeks instead of the current eight-week period.
Nigh advises farmers who haven’t applied yet to wait until a compromise bill is passed. Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting industries have only received about 1.5% of all PPP loans so far. There’s about $130-Billion dollars remaining.
