The Employee Retention Credit is a fully refundable tax credit for employers equal to 50 percent of qualified wages (including allocable qualified health plan expenses) that eligible employers pay their employees. This Employee Retention Credit applies to qualified wages paid after March 12, 2020, and before January 1, 2021. The maximum amount of qualified wages taken into account with respect to each employee for all calendar quarters is $10,000. This means the maximum credit for an eligible employer for qualified wages paid to any employee is $5,000.
Impact of Other Credit and Relief Provisions
An eligible employer’s ability to claim the Employee Retention Credit is impacted by other credit and relief provisions as follows:
- If an employer receives a Small Business Interruption Loan under the Paycheck Protection Program, authorized under the CARES Act, then the employer is not eligible for the Employee Retention Credit.
- Wages for this credit do not include wages for which the employer received a tax credit for paid sick and family leave under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act.
- Wages counted for this credit cannot be counted for the paid family and medical leave credit under section 45S of the Internal Revenue Code.
- Employees are not counted for this credit if the employer is allowed a Work Opportunity Tax Credit under section 51 of the Internal Revenue Code for the employee.
Who Is an Eligible Employer?
Eligible employers for the purposes of the Employee Retention Credit are employers that carry on a trade or business during the 2020 calendar year, including tax-exempt organizations, that either:
- Fully or partially suspend operation during any calendar quarter in 2020 due to orders from an appropriate governmental authority limiting commerce, travel or group meetings (for commercial, social, religious or other purposes) due to COVID-19.
- Experience a significant decline in gross receipts during the calendar quarter.
What Are Qualified Wages?
Qualified wages are wages and compensation paid by an eligible employer to some or all employees after March 12, 2020, and before January 1, 2021. Qualified wages include the eligible employer’s qualified health plan expenses that are properly allocable to the wages.
The definition of qualified wages depends, in part, on the average number of full-time employees employed by the eligible employer during 2019.
If the eligible employer averaged more than 100 full-time employees in 2019, qualified wages are the wages paid to an employee for time that the employee is not providing services due to economic hardship, specifically either (1) a full or partial suspension of operations by order of a governmental authority due to COVID-19 or (2) a significant decline in gross receipts.
For these employers, qualified wages taken into account for an employee may not exceed what the employee would have been paid for working an equivalent duration during the 30 days immediately preceding the period of economic hardship described in (1) or (2) above.
If the eligible employer averaged 100 or fewer full-time employees in 2019, qualified wages are the wages paid to any employee during any period of economic hardship described in (1) or (2) above.
