Dear Booksellers,

Today’s update is an urgent request from ABA’s advocacy team. I’m turning this over to them, and I appreciate your attention to this important matter...

We need you to take action to support the Small Business Expense Protection Act.

On April 30, an IRS notice declared that businesses that qualify for PPP loan forgiveness cannot deduct wages or other business expenses they paid for with forgiven PPP funds. A new bill would reverse that IRS rule.

On May 6, a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators introduced the Small Business Expense Protection Act, which would clarify the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) so small businesses can deduct from their taxes expenses paid with a forgiven PPP loan. The bipartisan group consisted of Senators John Cornyn (R-TX), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Marco Rubio (R-FL), and Tom Carper (D-DE). 

Please reach out to your Senators and Representative to express your support for this legislation.

Tell your lawmakers: 

“Support the Small Business Expense Protection Act to reverse the IRS’s misguided ruling prohibiting businesses from deducting expenses associated with PPP loans. This IRS guidance is the opposite of what Congress intended when crafting the CARES Act. Small businesses that receive PPP loans should not be penalized with an unexpected tax bill when they receive urgently needed federal relief. I urge you to support this legislation so expenses paid with a forgiven PPP loan can still be deducted from small businesses’ taxes. This is much-needed to make sure small businesses have the liquidity and help to get through these difficult times.”

To find contact details for your federal lawmakers, go to www.usa.gov/elected-officials.

Thanks in advance for your outreach!

ABA is here for all of you. Please reach out if there is anything we can help with. We are an incredibly creative, resilient, supportive industry. We’ll get through this, together.

Best,
Allison

P.S. Please let us know if you hear back from your legislators!