Surly Thread of Business Owners/Managers, Etc. & Current Business Climate

[immamac 42832]

10 minutes ago, Cheeseweasel said:

We'll never know what would have happened as an alternative. I think the fact that businesses survived, the unemployment rates stayed low, etc. are pretty good measures of success.

 

I agree. The funding end was good, the "forgiveness" part was a sham. The should go after the abusers.

PPP as an alternative to doing nothing mitigated disaster, but PPP as an alternative to something sane with slightly more oversight is most certainly going to go down as one of the biggest black eyes.

We know that PPP was rife with fraud, misallocated funds, and all kinds of other nonsense that profited banks and megacorps most and the intended audience of SBO least. That's measurable and known today. 

[Cheeseweasel 26438]

Hindsight is 20/20 and our government moves slow as shit. The bill was crafted with the typical Washington thought of "we'll cross that bridge when we come to it". At that point, the scammers had already figured it out. Good program shitty execution. 

[DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt 12301]

When you're looking back through that 20/20 lens, try to remember the part where the global economy was quickly coming to a grinding halt and that the US government known for moving 'slow as shit' was put in the unenviable position of having to do something very, very quickly. They weren't in a position to be able to hammer out every detail, unfortunately.

And yep, it has led to a lot of fraud...but was it better than the alternative of doing nothing? Of course.

[Cheeseweasel 26438]

Yup. Well said.

[Brew 3049]

Everyone can keep telling themselves all of that to make themselves feel better, but there are a laundry of issues that were created after the first round was authorized and through the forgiveness timing. Forgiveness itself was a moving target well into the end of the year as the IRS kept moving the target. We had a number of companies that expected to pay it back with the early guidance that got swept up into forgiveness as guidance changed. Round 1 could have been tied to numbers rather than putting in the economic impact wording. Once you cleared the worst of it, if you had a loss then you keep the funds. If you don’t meet a numeric criteria, then you owed it back. Round 2 should have taken into account other funding mechanisms that people received, specifically in the medical arena or been strictly tied to specified impacted industries. ERTC should never have been opened up to PPP recipients a year after the fact unless they strictly qualified based on revenue reductions. The economic impact bullshit standard that credit companies are qualifying people under are ridiculous. 

Fraud pails in comparison to the number of companies that qualified under the vague economic impact standards and with the moving guidance on forgiveness even though their profits were running at record levels. Without supply chain issues and employee issues, those record profits would have been higher so we are impacted economically. 

[T’Boo Ted Marshall 2731]

Truth.

For many it was a get rich quick type on barely surviving/near fraudulent businesses. For others it was a band aid in case I get cut type funding.

They absolutely should go after the companies that were fraudulent, but it is the US govt. The sound bites are much more colorful than the actual dog bites.

[Hefeweizen 5308]

11 hours ago, Cheeseweasel said:

Nah. I have all the answers I need. Good luck with your sale. I hope you use your profits to practice what you preach.

I always worry about the guys who think they know the answers… especially in engineering, they’re usually wrong, or at least haven’t explored all the possibilities.

[Guest]

Here lately I feel like I work with a shit-ton of folks who cannot even identify what the gotdam questions are.

[Incredulity 11643]

My post history on this thread will confirm as much, but I am to this day stunned the PPP didn’t devolve into a major political cudgel.  

Yes, there was some shaming that got some companies to immediately pay it back.  Given the facts on the ground I don’t blame any company for taking a legitimate PPP loan and applying for forgiveness.

[G650 14229]

What the fuck happened in this thread.

[VABuckeye 2472]

It devolved.  Badly.

[Wally Pryor 5261]

New DOL rule kicking in 7-1-24 revamping non-exempt classification. Recommendation for time-tracking software?  Just a small number of employees who are converting to NE, about 10.