The SBA recently released its new version of the forgiveness application following some recent legislative changes to the terms of the program. Below are the highlights. Refer to our step-by-step forgiveness application instructions for more details on completing your application.

We know how important it is to get timely information on the PPP program, so we created this step-by-step guide to help you through the PPP Loan Forgiveness Application.

My business was approved for a PPP loan, and we'll be putting employees back onto payroll that had been laid off. How will this work with the changes to unemployment from the CARES Act? Will employees still be eligible for unemployment if we have to lay them off again after the 8-week loan period? Will they still be able to get the extra $600 per week?

Employment attorney, Chisa Chervenick, answers several questions about the Payroll Protection Program (PPP) and loan forgiveness.

Q: I just hired a new employee. Are their wages considered eligible payroll expenses under the PPP loan? Is forgiveness limited to the wages of former employees only?

A new hire’s wages fall under the definition of payroll costs eligible for forgiveness. Had Congress intended to exclude these wages, it likely would have done so expressly alongside exclusions for wages paid to employees principally residing outside of the U.S. However, there are still outstanding questions about the forgiveness process as we await more guidance from the SBA. We provided some initial guidance about forgiveness here, but there will be more coming.

We have now gone through the initial first phase of the Payroll Protection Program (PPP) with businesses submitting their loan applications to their banks. While the initial application process was a bit frenzied, the next phase – loan forgiveness – will be even more important and potentially just as confusing as the application process.

As of the writing of this post, we are still waiting for solid guidelines on how forgiveness will work. However, it is important to begin planning now. Therefore, we are offering this preview of PPP and highlighting both what we know and what we don’t know. We will be providing more guidance as soon as more guidelines are released.

Purpose of the PPP Loan and Certifications Made on the Application

The loan should be used to maintain payroll for existing employees and to bring employees already laid off back onto payroll. This is the entire purpose of the loan: so employers can keep paying people to sit at home and remove some of the burden from the state unemployment system. The states can't deficit spend like the federal government can, so this will allow the federal government to remove some of that financial burden from the states and provide a vehicle for federal funds to help shoulder the load.