$26,000 GOVERNMENT GRANT (Employee Retention Credit)

Why does nobody know about the employee retention credit? I want you to get this money. You'd be crazy not to get this. Instead of the car, it's cash; it's your cash you paid this. It pays up to twenty-six thousand dollars per employee that was on the W1 or W2, or say W2 in 2000 and 2001. I'm urging every company in America to go figure this out for themselves because that money has already been thrown out of the helicopter, waiting for you to pick it up.

Still good to be here at the headquarters and hang out with our team here. What are these guys doing? Everybody in this room is helping teach people about ERC and always provide a beautiful breakfast and have people really learn about the program.

Alright, Mr. Wonderful here, you're at my YouTube channel. We're talking about something really important today: the employee retention credit, which most of you have never heard of. I certainly hadn't heard of it until very recently and learned a lot about it because this is probably the lowest cost of capital for any small business anywhere, anytime. If you have employees between five and five hundred, I've got the expert with me. This is Josh Fox, he's the founder and CEO of Bottom Line Concepts. They're the largest processor of these ERC credits.

This is a 170-page program, so it's not easy. This isn't like PPP. We just call up your bank manager and say, "Give me a loan." It doesn't work; there's not a loan, it's an application. Josh is going to tell us all about it and how to get it and why I've become, yes, the Ambassador and paid spokesperson for this. I love this program; it's going away very soon. You gotta learn all about it.

Let's talk employee retention credit. Josh Fox, what is an ERC? Let's just start there. So, during the Trump Administration, when President Trump was enacted, they came up with the CARES Act. The CARES Act offered businesses three opportunities: you had the PPP loan, you had the EIDL loan, and you had the ERC tax refund. Almost everybody, it makes a big difference right there. Two of them are loans and one's a refund.

Exactly. So the ERC is a refund; that's correct. The cash, cash payroll tax refund. Okay, go on, sorry, I just have to make sure we got that point. I mean, that's a big difference: a loan versus cash. Cash, I like cash! That's what we're talking about, okay?

And the other loans are done. So we're sitting here in 2023 and the EIDL is over, the PPP is over, and the only one left from the original CARES Act is the ERC. And yes, Kevin, it is a beautiful hard check in the mail where you get actual cash from the IRS.

Alright, so let's talk about how it works because it sounds like to me if it's an employee retention credit, that person had to be an employee. So, I'm going to make the assumption this money is not for the owner, not for people on the cap table, not for shareholders, it's for employees, right? You had to have owned a business, but it's based on you having W-2 employees in America, not 10.99.

So, as long as you had W-2 employees and you paid federal payroll taxes, that's why you would be eligible. So you have to be on payroll in 2020 on the W-2 and you have to be on payroll for the first six months of 2021 on the W-2, correct?

So, there were six quarters the program was open. Well, walk us through the six quarters. So you had quarters two, three, and four of 2020, and you had quarters one, two, and three of 2021.

Okay, so that's how it's measured; you have to be on the W-2 during that period. Now, let's talk my favorite part: cash. How much can you get back per employee that was on a W-2 in those six quarters? So, the calculation in 2020, to be exact, Kevin, is 50% of the employee's salary to a maximum of five thousand dollars per employee for the year of 2020.

And in 2021, the numbers skyrocketed to 70% of the employee's salary to a maximum of seven thousand per quarter. How did that happen? They just changed the rules in 2021 because of the chaos of the pandemic. So, they wanted to even get more to keep those employees on payroll.

100%. So, if you can get 5,000 per person max in 2020, that was 50% in 2020, up to five thousand max. And then what happens?

21,000 max in 2021. Oh, that's how you come up with twenty-six thousand: twenty-one thousand for 2021 plus five thousand in 2020; that's twenty-six thousand dollars per employee!

That is moment because that's a lot of money! It is. Now, there's a caveat here: the PPP money would have to be reduced from the twenty-six thousand dollars. So, if you took PPP loan one and PPP loan two, you would reduce the 26,000.

So, what we're seeing on average, Kevin, is if you took PPP money, somewhere around ten thousand dollars a person. So, let's say hypothetically you owned a restaurant in New York City where I'm from and you had a hundred employees and you took PPP money, you would still get a million dollars in the mail from the IRS. So, it's huge obviously!

Now the big question is: why does nobody know about this? Because look, when I first heard about this, when I first met Josh, you know I've got lots of investments in lots of companies. I'm a major advocate for entrepreneurship in America and making many, many investments in entrepreneurs, of which many suffered through the pandemic.

When I first heard about this, I called BS. I don't believe it because I used the PPP. We went through the money center banks to get it; it was very easy to do. We had our CEOs call the banks; they got their loans, and they were well deserved, and we used them wisely to stay alive during the pandemic.

So, when I heard about this, I said, "Nah, it can't be true." But when I dug around, I even called my politician friends, governors, senators—they didn't know about it. I mean, that's how you know that's how misinformation is. There's no information out there. Then a bunch of people told me, "Well, you can't get it because you took the PPP." Also not true!

So let's ask Josh: why does nobody know about the employee retention credit? You know what's interesting? You're talking about the banks, Kevin, because in the PPP loan process the federal government made it very clear that if you wanted a PPP loan, you would call Wells Fargo, Citibank, Bank of America, any of the big banks in our country and they would process. Process, process.

In Canada, by the way, there's no loans. It's just process. Process; that's all. And here there was chaos because remember in the original CARES Act you could not do both programs. So, if you had done PPP, you could not do ERC in the original program.

And when they changed the law in 2021, the banks were not doing ERC because it's not a loan. So you're getting a tax refund. So, the government never made it clear to anybody about how to do this.

Does your CFO know how to do this? Not really; he or she has never done it before. Do the banks do it? Nope, the banks don't do it. The payroll companies? Yeah, some of them are doing it as a payroll company. Your accountant? No, your accountant's never done this before unless you have an account that went into this business.

And Bottom Line, my firm, Kevin, has been in business since 2009 and we've been working with the federal government and the state government to recover money for Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 companies. So a lot of our big, big corporate clients have worked with Bottom Line to recover other government programs we've done: sales tax, use tax, employment tax, work opportunity tax credits, research and development tax credits, unclaimed property, property tax—all of these other government programs that have been around for decades and decades; that's what we've been involved with from day one.

So, when we first discovered in 2020 the ERC opportunity, we were so well positioned to take this on because this is what we've been doing for 15 years.

So, you're a taxologist? I would say that.

Okay, now when I heard about this program was real, that's when I jumped into action. I said to myself, "Well, I could do this myself." I'm very fortunate; I have many, many people you know that know me and follow me—millions of followers—and I should get the word out there. But then it hit me: you can't just make one phone call and have this happen. This is a very complicated application process, process, process. Depending on the side of the board you're on, and I say, I'm not going to do that myself.

Who's got all this infrastructure built up given there's only 24 months left to this program? I'm not going to rebuild what Josh already did and that's why we formed the partnership. So, it's Team O'Leary Ventures and all my people teamed up with Bottom Line's Concepts and said, "Look, let's form a partnership and get the word out there.

Let's go to town and tell every small business in America to apply for this and if they do qualify, let's get them an expert to actually go through the whole program and get their application in front of the IRS as fast as possible because it takes about four to five months to actually get the check.

But because Josh has spent millions of dollars building up the infrastructure, way better for me to partner with him than to try and do it myself, which is what I decided not to do. And now we have this partnership; this is a pure play on ERC.

So let's talk about the services and how this happens. You go to wondertrust.com, you book an appointment with one of Josh's experts. They assess whether you actually qualify for this. Then what happens, Josh?

There's two ways to qualify and this is very vital to the conversation, Kevin. In order to get your ERC refund, you had to have had one or the other of the following things happen: you either need to have had a 20% reduction in your gross revenue when compared from 21 back to 19, so you had to have a revenue reduction, or—and this is a big change also because it used to be that you had to have a revenue reduction to qualify— that is no longer the case.

I want to repeat that: that is no longer the case; you do not need a revenue reduction to qualify. The other way to qualify is to have a change in your operations.

So, you sent people home or something? Essentially, yeah. Every industry is different, of course. Like if we used a couple of examples: let's say you owned a restaurant and your business model went from dining inside to being forced to dine outside; that's a change of operations. Or let's say you own that same restaurant and you were forced to go to a delivery model; that would be a change of operations.

So pretty well everybody had some kind of changed operation during the pandemic, which lasted a lot longer and it was a lot more chaotic than people thought, which is why so many businesses actually qualify for this—even if they took the PPP.

So let's go through all the misconceptions because when I talk to my companies, the first thing I always call the CEO and say, "Listen, you heard about this; this is the lowest cost of capital we can get for the business. I want you to apply for it." And then they come up with all these reasons that they thought about it but didn't do it.

Walk me through the top ten misconceptions of ERC.

Well, the biggest one is understanding the W-2 versus 1099. Right? As long as you had W-2 employees, there's a good path for you to qualify. If you had 1099, you're definitely not eligible. I think that's number one.

Okay, number two on the hit parade?

Number two is if you had foreign employees, like non-US employees, you do not qualify. But if you had a foreign company and you had W-2 U.S. employees, you can qualify those employees that were W-2 and worked in the USA. So that's the foreign employee rule.

Okay, number three on the hit parade.

If you got a PPP loan or you got a second PPP loan, there's still a very, very strong likelihood that you would still qualify for ERC because the wages that you used in your PPP forgiveness application is only a certain period of time. And remember, everybody, this thing was open for six quarters.

So even if you had PPP forgiveness in a chunk of that time, there's still other time that you can qualify for ERC.

Okay, so let's talk about the confusion around how long this takes to actually get the check. What is the real answer? How long if I applied today and I submitted my application into the IRS, when am I going to get that check?

So, it all depends on how big of your refund. I mean, we've had clients that have applied for 40 million, 50 million dollars for one company. Those companies definitely took longer. The IRS is taking longer; it's being more scrutinized. But you know the average application is really 250,000 or less per quarter.

So as long as your application was 250,000 per quarter or less, remember you could have applied for six quarters, so that would still be a lot of money, would be over a million dollars. Those are happening much quicker. We've seen two to five months, somewhere in that range.

Yeah, that's not bad! So, I mean, you really want to make sure you put in an application with no mistakes in it, right?

For sure! That's why you need an expert to submit this thing because the last thing you want to do is wait two to five months to find out it was done incorrectly.

So, experts aren't free. What does it cost?

How do you pay for this? The nice thing about us is we're absolutely on contingency, so we don't charge our clients anything ever until they actually get their money. So we're willing to work for months and months and months for you, the client, and we will not charge you until you get your checks.

That's not the case for a lot of unscrupulous players in this market because when I actually started digging into it and looked at people that could process these applications, I came to the conclusion there's a lot of wealth for lack of a better word, schlocksters out there that are charging money up front. They want to hit your credit card. I called around and I thought, "This is very inconsistent."

And then when I asked how many employees they had, very often they wouldn't disclose it, so it sounded like a mom-and-pop operation in their basement or something. We don't charge them anything!

Remember, the key is that we are finding people in this industry the last couple of years that are startups, that have no employees, no tax experience, and they're trying to charge people up front because they have no capital to run their business. You know, that's the problem. So, you need scale to operate this.

Now, the reason there's not a lot of competition coming into the market anymore is this is going to run out soon, right?

Yeah, that's a very good point. So we're sitting here in April of 2023 and in order to file for the 2020 refund, you have exactly one year. So, you have until April of 2024. But the big year—remember, Kevin—the numbers went up dramatically in 2021. You have two years left to file until April of 2025 for the 2021 refund.

So that's a big deal; this is about timing. So if you haven't heard of the program, number one, you've got to dig in immediately because this money's waiting there for you. Number two is it's going to take five months so you've got to really start to focus on getting it done.

Let's talk about the actual nuts and bolts, Josh, of what I, as a business owner, have to do and how I interface with you to get the information, the W-2 information, and what else. How does it work? Should I call you? You tell me you're going to qualify; I can get you a check for a half a million dollars. What happens next?

So the key, everybody, is a document called the 941. The 941 is your quarterly payroll filing that you, by law, must submit to the IRS. You do that every quarter for your business.

What we are allowed to do with this program, Kevin, is to resubmit to re-amend your 941 with a document called the 941X. So we are resubmitting your 941X's; we certify that into the IRS.

And this is maybe the coolest part of what we've created here, Kevin, is we have direct online access to the TDS system of the IRS—the transcript delivery system. So we have enough CPAs here and enough tax attorneys where we've been approved to have our own login to the IRS's website.

So anytime we want to check on the status of a client's application and submission, we can do that in seconds. No one has that access. That is super important to understanding where your file is, where it is in the process, and when you're going to get your money.

That is a huge differentiator. So in layman's terms, instead of calling the IRS 1-800 crickets, you can check it immediately.

I love that, 1-800 crickets! Yeah, you'll be on hold for five hours if you ever get anybody on the phone! But this way, you can check by calling in the support desk at Bottom Line Solutions and say, "Where is my application? How far away am I? When's the check being issued?"

I understand you actually find out when the check is issued, right?

Oh, for sure! So what's nice also is we get a 2848 signed by every client, which is a limited power of attorney, and we get the same communication that you get—the client—we get to our office.

And we're going to show you that a little bit later; we have thousands, tens of thousands of those letters that we've received and it tells us exactly what date the checks are being mailed to you, which is the party time, the celebration time, where you actually get the money.

Okay, so that means that you can take it from the beginning from the first point of contact right through the whole journey. And then after you, the business owner, gets the check, you pay your bill.

So, conceptually, everybody, if you have fewer employees, there's going to be a higher percentage to process this thing. And if you have more employees, there's going to be a smaller percentage because the money you get back is based on the number of employees and the larger the salaries that you paid these people.

So we're willing to do it for a smaller contingency fee if you have a larger company. It's about building the infrastructure of experts that can actually assess: A) do you qualify? B) how to actually put the application together, and then C) tracking it through the system.

100%! So if there's anybody in your audience, Kevin, who owes money to the IRS today—and there's probably a bunch of you out there that owe back taxes, back income taxes, back property taxes—this will be a lifeline for your business.

We've had many, many clients who got a ton of money with the ERC program and the government netted out the money that they owed in back taxes and they got the net money. So they got this as a lifeline for their family and for their business, and now they're out of debt to the IRS. What a wonderful feeling!

The clients that we've done this for bring up a good point, Josh. I want to ask you this: let's say you're getting a check for 500 and you owe the IRS 100. You'll actually receive a check for 400.

That's correct. Is that 400,000 taxable? It probably is taxable.

So what's happening here, just to get a little technical with the audience for a second, is you're getting money back that you already took a deduction on in previous taxes, payroll, correct? Now I get it. So you already took the deduction; now you're getting the money back, so they're taxing you for sure!

Well, that seems fair. It does seem very fair.

Now, we have clients that had large losses. We have clients that had depreciation from real estate and things like that, so they were able to either reduce or eliminate the taxes on the ERC depending on their specific situation.

And so we've seen clients—sorry—that had full taxes due and we've seen clients that had no taxes due on ERC depending on their past. But for that, you use your regular accountant, right?

For sure! Yeah, because that's the big problem. This whole deal—what I discovered in doing my own diligence on setting up this, let's call it, massive education program—is that it is a very specific vertical skill set to process an employee retention credit.

It's not something my accountant knew anything about or ever did. Now, why is it that the accounting firm has more or less ignored this?

Well, remember, accountants are very, very busy doing typically regular income tax work and audit work. So how do they have the time? Especially this time a year, Kevin, as we're sitting here at the end of April of 2023, accountants are very, very busy with their regular practices and just don't have the time to learn this or do this.

So you've built the infrastructure; you've taken years to do it. You've got hundreds of people and lots and lots of them on the end of phones to help people to make this. This is not something you can just simply automate and just do everything online.

Some aspects you can, but the first and most important thing is to book that appointment to find out if you qualify. And I've learned a lot about the misconceptions—my own companies included—over 50 of them. So many misconceptions about this program and the value of it is so important because today, as everybody knows, we've had the fastest rise in interest rates in decades.

And so it used to be very inexpensive money for my companies. Like factoring—you get a receivable up to Walmart or Target—we used to be able to go to the market, sell the receivable for seven or eight percent and get the cash we desperately need to make the next set of inventory.

Today, those same loans in factoring are anywhere from 17 to 29, which is basically all of our profit. Chihuahua, yeah, that's crazy! And so this ERC program is, you know, the zero cost of capital. You definitely want to get it.

So, I'm urging everybody, and I'm working my tail off probably 40-45 percent of my day talking about this. You're going to see me everywhere, all over the airwaves on social media. I want to be known as Mr. ERC Slash Wonderful when this is over because I want every single business to get this money because it's theirs.

Is there any limit on this? Josh, how much money has been put aside for this?

The latest number that I have seen is the IRS so far has paid out 28 billion dollars in ERC, and it's not stopping. So, it's not that there's a limit on the money that the government is willing to pay for small businesses; it is a limit of time.

So, we're going to have the FOMO's of the world, right—the fear of missing out—which people are starting to get a hold of this thing. They have friends and family who got the money and they're now saying, "I want the money!"

Right, so we have that going on. But what's going to happen here, Kevin, and we talk about this, is that in two years you're going to have so many businesses in America that are going to miss this thing because they're not educated on it.

And if they miss it, they're going to go, "Damn, what a great opportunity that I missed for my life, for my business, for my family, for my co-workers." And that's the feel-good story here, everybody, is once the clients have gotten the money—and we've gotten billions and billions of dollars already for people—is, are you able to actually do something good with the money?

And so what we've seen people do is we've seen people pay down debt, we've seen people go and get better office space, we've seen people open new locations, we've just seen so many wonderful stories of once they got their ERC money, how they made their business better.

How they increased the benefits to their employees, we've seen people do better health insurance plans, we've seen people match their 401(k) plan for their employees—is all of the good things—the feel-good stories—of what people have done with the ERC money!

And it was the opposite, Kevin. With PPP, we saw people buying Ferraris. We see people being selfish. With ERC, we see people doing good for their communities.

And think about inventory! That's what I always sweat for all my companies is where do we pay and how do we get the next batch of product to sell? That capital is getting very hard to find.

That's what really got me going on ERC. I thought to myself, "Okay, if I have to wait 90 days to get paid through retail distribution, so many of my companies are consumer goods and services." This is a huge amount of capital with no cost to it to go into running the business.

It makes total sense to do the work, so that's why I'm spending so much time on it. That's why we're talking to you this morning and today. This is really important; this is absolutely 100 percent something you have to pursue.

The most important is simply find out if your company qualifies, yes or no. That's very binary. Yes or no. And if the answer is yes, we take it from there. We make this happen for you, and you get your check four to five months later.

So what are you waiting for? What are you doing? Why aren't you jumping on all of this? Stop listening to us right now and get online to wondertrust.com on your cell phone, on your laptop, whatever it is; book that appointment.

You know, I feel like an infomercial because I am! But I want you to get this money. I want you to get this money. You'd be crazy, crazy not to get this. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

You know the way I look at it? Pretend in the middle of the pandemic you had to abandon your car on the street right at the beginning of 2021, and the police found the keys and they took them back to the station.

They're calling you, saying, "Come and get your car; we want to give it back to you." Instead of the car, it's cash; it's your cash you paid this on your W-2s. It's your cash. They want you to come and get it; we'll help you do it.

I mean, is there anything better than this in terms of raising capital for your company? The answer is no, because you don't have to give up anything for it. You have to give up equity; it's not a loan; you have to pay it back.

That's my last appeal. Anything else you want to say, Josh?

Yeah, there's a word on the IRS's website that literally has stuck in my head for the last couple of years, and the word is "urge." U-R-G-E. The IRS has written the words on their website irs.gov: it says the IRS is urging small businesses to take advantage of this.

The IRS is a very conservative group of people. It's a group of people that play, obviously, incredibly between the lines. But the fact that on their website, Kevin, it says that they are urging small businesses to do this is an incredible shot of confidence to all of you listening today that you should do this.

And if you read further that sentence after they use the word urge, what they're saying is that we're now making it simpler and easier, and we're relaxing the qualifications for you, the small business owner, who was hurt during the pandemic to actually go after this money.

At this point, they did press releases; it's all over their website and you can read it for yourself on irs.gov. They are urging you and making it easier for qualifying to go get the money.

You know, it's remarkable—the tax code was written to support you as a small business owner, not to put you out of business. The idea is you need to know the rules. You can't play football unless you know what the referee's rules are; same thing with the IRS.

I tell all my companies they are not your enemy in this case. The IRS is your friend; they want to give you back some of the money you paid them. You gotta do this; this is probably the most important program you'll ever see for your business: money back from the IRS!

That's right! Those letters strike terror in the hearts of small business because they're worried about being audited. That's your chance to be given a gift from them; that's the way I look at it.

They want you to take this to support 70% of the American economy. Yes, we are 70% of the American economy. Small business in America is the essence of what makes this country great!

So do not delay; apply for this, at least find out if you qualify. Just do it. Thanks, John.

Economics 101, Kevin.

Money In Motion!

Money In Motion! I mean, that is capitalism at its best! And so, if the IRS gives out hundreds of billions of dollars to the small business community and you guys go out and spend that money, and people pay taxes on that money, and your employees pay income taxes on that money, they pay payroll taxes, you pay payroll taxes—Money In Motion is what creates a great economy!

And that's what the IRS has been thinking with this: to get more money moving throughout the economy. So please, take advantage of it!

I can't think of a better way to end it. Thank you, everybody, for listening. Now turn this off and go to wondertrust.com and find out if you're eligible for this.

Thanks, Josh!

Yeah, that was great. Thanks for coming up. Take care, everybody! See you again soon: wondertrust.com.