Don't Mess With Taxes

If your company received an incorrect Employee Retention Credit (ERC) payment, you have 10 more days to set things right with the Internal Revenue Service.

The deadline to report your erroneous ERC claim and repay a portion of the improperly paid funds is next week, Friday, Nov. 22.

After that, the IRS’ second ERC Voluntary Disclosure Program, or VDP, will be closed.

Countering aggressive promoters: The tax agency offered this and an earlier VDP opportunity because many business owners filed claims at the urging of aggressive tax credit promoters.

The ERC mill agents convinced many business owners that their companies qualified for the COVID-era tax break when in fact they did not. The promoters got a fee for their bad tax advice. The ill-informed businesses got a potential audit.

In light of that bad advice, the latest IRS ERC VDP allows companies to correct their claim errors, pay back most of the tax break, and avoid potentially harsher IRS follow-up action.

Specifically, the IRS will accept remittance of 85 percent of the incorrectly claimed ERC amount the businesses received. The 15 percent discounted payback accounts for fees taxpayers likely paid the promoters to file the bad ERC claim.

But again, such admissions and remittance or incorrect ERC amounts must be done by Nov. 22.

You can find more on the ERC VDP in IRS.gov’s frequently asked questions about the program.

Consolidated claim process for third-party payers: The IRS also has instituted a consolidated claim process to help third-party payers, or TPPs, and their clients resolve incorrect ERC claims filed at the instance of aggressive tax credit promoters.

This process lets TPPs that filed a prior claim with multiple clients “withdraw” only some clients’ claims while maintaining the claims of qualifying clients.

TPPs must verify that the claim:

• Includes only business clients that were part of a previous ERC claim.
• Doesn’t increase the amount of ERC claimed by clients.

Consolidated claims must include the full statement on this topic provided at preparing your consolidated claim

Third-party payers can use this process through Nov. 22.

Withdrawing a bad ERC claim: Finally, if you discover you filed a wrong ERC claim, but it hasn’t yet been paid, consider withdrawing it. Here, you remove the claim from the IRS processing queue.

You can find more in my on this option in my post IRS allows businesses to withdraw improper ERC claims, as well as at the IRS’ ERC claim withdrawal webpage.

You also might find these items of interest if you’re anywhere in the ERC claim, disclosure, or withdrawal process:

• Tips if the IRS audits your business' ERC claim
• 5 new warning signs your ERC claim might be wrong
• IRS processing 400,000 ERC claims worth $10 billion
• Signs you should consider withdrawing your employee retention tax credit claim

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