BREAKING: THE PROBLEMS WITH YOUR FREE $10,000 STIMULUS MONEY

What's up you guys? It's Graham here. So, we have to have a talk about this because, from what I could see, this is a pretty big deal that almost no one is covering yet. Trust me, this will turn out to be a pretty big issue if it doesn't get resolved in the next few days. And this is what I'm talking about.

See, by now, I'm sure we've all heard about this two trillion dollar stimulus package, right? It's the one that guarantees $1,200 checks to every American earning under seventy-five thousand dollars a year. It extends unemployment benefits by an extra $600 per week, and it also gets small businesses the ability to receive an immediate non-repayable $10,000 advance to use towards maintaining payroll, making sure the rent or mortgage payment is paid, while having to cope with increased cost of goods due to the current state of our economy. That basically means that pretty much anybody with a small business that has under 500 employees can go to the government website, fill out a form within a few minutes, check the little box that says, "I would like to be considered for an advance of up to $10,000," BAM! They can get $10,000 direct deposited into their bank account within three days.

If it also does not need to be repaid, even if that business is subsequently denied for the injury disaster loan, that sounds really, really good, right? But wait. If you thought this was too good to be true, it gets us slightly more unbelievable because the verification process as to who actually can qualify for this loan, according to the actual bill from Congress, is that the administrator shall verify that the applicant is an eligible entity by accepting a self-certification from the applicant under penalty of perjury. That pretty much means that anyone who checks a box that says, "Hey guys, yeah I qualify, no reason not to believe me, so I would like my free ten thousand dollars advanced within three days please," will just get the money and then not have to pay it back, as long as you've been affected in any way by this illness and you meet some very loose regulations.

Well, two things immediately come to mind for any sensible person. Number one being that just sounds too good to be true, and number two that just seems ripe for a whole bunch of abuse. After all, what's preventing Bob from going and requesting $10,000 for his work-from-home side hobby ice sculpture business for friends and family, where he hasn't sold a single thing in months? What's preventing Joe from requesting $10,000 because he runs his own business doing the occasional Uber driving on the weekends—because he's bored? Who's preventing Sally from straight-up lying on her application by saying that she's been running a small business sole proprietorship on the side, receiving $10,000 for free, not having to pay it back, and then hoping they don't actually go and catch her?

But with this money being promised within three days of the application and now having it be almost two weeks later, with pretty much no one having received it yet, what's going on? And can small businesses actually get the money that they were promised? Well, let's take a look into this. For anyone who enjoys and appreciates my very thorough internet detective work, if you wouldn't mind destroying the like button through the YouTube algorithm, it would greatly help out my channel a lot. The more attention this gets, the more people are gonna see it, and the more pressure we could put on the SBA to actually get this money out as soon as possible as promised.

So, here's what I'm getting at. There's a lot of worthy businesses out there who are in desperate need of this emergency grant money and needed it immediately when it was released. It was seen by most as a free ten thousand dollars for businesses to help stay afloat during a time of need, and that, to many businesses, was seen as a life jacket to keep them afloat just a little bit longer. But given the wording and the self-reporting nature of the economic disaster form, they basically just leave it up to you to tell them whether or not you qualify. And when you give people the power to basically raise their hand and say, "Hey, I need the $10,000, trust me, I'm good for it; I need the money, give it to me," you bet you're gonna have a large influx of applications that will try to take advantage of it. And that is where I believe a lot of the trouble begins.

The entire bill is worded very openly, and I'm going to read you a few points to this. I will link the entire verbiage to all of this down below in the description for anyone who wants to check this out. To be eligible, all you need is to have a business with us in five hundred employees, operate as an individual with or without employees, or as an independent contractor. You also need to be in business for one year prior to the disaster, and really besides a few other small nuances, that's it. It also says the small business may request that the administrator provide an advance that is subject to paragraph three in the amount requested by such applicant to such applicant within three days after the administrator receives an application from such applicant.

And, of course, the verification for this is as simple as accepting a self-certification that yes, you are eligible, and that's it. Boom! Done. Then it says the amount of the advance shall not be more than $10,000. It could be used towards paying yourself, or paying your rent or mortgage payments, or repaying other obligations that ordinarily could not be met due to revenue loss. Oh wait, it gets better though. Here it is in writing: "An applicant shall not be required to repay any amounts of an advance provided under this subsection even if subsequently denied a loan under Section 7B2 of the Small Business Act."

I think needless to say, when this came out, there was a frenzy of people clamoring over this free ten thousand dollars. Since there's only ten billion dollars provided to give funding for small businesses and over 30 million small businesses currently in existence, you have to act fast because this is on a first-come, first-served basis. Now, to put that in perspective, ten thousand dollars per business only covers three percent of all small businesses in the United States. That's it! And that doesn't even cover sole proprietors, which is another twenty-three million people.

So, if you're late to the party and you don't apply, you're not gonna be getting any free money anyway. Here's what I'm getting at. When this first came out, everyone was rushing around, talking about how to apply, encouraging everyone else to apply as soon as possible, and reiterating that this is completely free money. From the way this is actually worded from the final bill of Congress, they would be right—it's totally free money. But there's a problem. See, it says that the small business may request payment to such applicant within three days after the administrator receives an application in the amount requested by such applicant, which is up to ten thousand dollars.

So, from the way this is worded, the stimulus money should have arrived for anyone who applied on the first day. But still now, no one has received anything yet. When you actually go and call the SBA, well honestly, don't bother calling the SBA. You're probably gonna be on hold for hours at minimum, and you're gonna get the runaround. But hey, at least on the bright side, you get to listen to this really cool jingle for like seven hours. Enjoy!

But the main problem here is the utter lack of planning, panic, lost hope, and confusion when it comes to the ten thousand dollar grant. I know from speaking with many of my subscribers who run small businesses that have absolutely been devastated by what's going on—they were really hopeful and looking forward to that ten thousand dollars coming in. After all, it came at the perfect time and would have put a lot of their immediate financial needs at rest if it were actually to come as promised. But now that we're over a week into it and absolutely nothing, this deserves looking into further to figure out exactly what's going on.

First, Steve Bolger, who is the director of the US Small Business Association, said recently that whether you get the full ten thousand dollars depends on the size of the business. If you have ten or more employees, you will get it. Then, when he was asked how many small businesses had actually received it, he replied with, "Once we give approval at the SBA, it will be sent over to the Department of Treasury who will disperse the advance to the small business owner." So, I don't know if any businesses have received their money yet.

So given this context, if you're self-employed, working for yourself, according to him, you're not going to be getting the full $10,000. And the catch here is that the verbiage says "up to $10,000," meaning that will be the most you're eligible to receive, but you could get less. Chances are, with so many applications and the need for money immediately, these applications are not going to be processed manually and have to be automated to get the money out as quick as possible.

So, where is it? Well, the honest answer is that no one knows. Even though they said it was gonna be three days from the point in which you submitted your application, the SBA just came out today and said, "IDL loan advances will start to be distributed this week—$1,000 per employee, up to ten thousand dollars max." So, if you're just applying as a sole proprietor without any other employees, well that looks like you're not gonna get ten thousand dollars. Instead, if it's just you, you're gonna get one thousand dollars. That is quite different than the ten thousand dollars that was implied about a week ago.

The SBA Massachusetts also mirrors this by saying frustrations out there are understandable. "Rome wasn't built in a day; systems needed to get balanced first. This week, EIDL loan advances will start to be distributed. Applicants will get $1,000 per employee and up to ten thousand dollars maximum. Sole proprietors should get one thousand dollars."

And really, when it comes down to it, I don't think it's any surprise the entire program was massively rushed out. In the SBA's defense, they probably had to scramble around like a chicken with their head cut off to figure out actually how to go about implementing this and what to do and how they could go about giving money to absolutely anyone who applied asking for it. And that, I believe, is the first problem. You can't just go out there asking people to raise their hand to get a free ten thousand dollars and then give it to people on a first-come, first-served basis.

There's got to be a system in place to make sure that the money not only gets put to its best use but also goes towards the businesses that actually need it. Unfortunately, I believe that's just not being done. Like, here's a thing: a small hobby action figure painting business that makes a thousand dollars a year should not be receiving ten thousand dollars from the stimulus.

But I also think it's very short-sighted to give a sole proprietor a thousand dollars because they are the only employee if, for instance, they're making $200,000 a year in gross revenue and saw a 40% pay decline with everything that's going on. Like, why is a business with ten employees should, in theory, get $10,000? But who's to say that business actually needs it?

The entire program, in my opinion, is a really good idea in theory, but woefully flawed on so many levels without any way of navigating all of the pent-up demand. Sure, one could argue the "up to ten thousand dollars" was worded very carefully not to get people's hopes up, but in the actual bill itself states that the applicant can request that the SBA provide in advance in the amount requested subject to the maximum of ten thousand dollars. That gives the impression that they're relying on you to tell them how much you need, and you could request up to ten thousand dollars.

Not to mention, the bill does say that the payment will be made three days after the administrator receives an application from such applicant, but who's to say it doesn't take three to six weeks for the administrator to receive the application? Obviously, there's a lot of frustration going on, and if you look at the SBA's Twitter page, you'll notice a lot of people who are rather upset about not receiving their money. But from my perspective, for whatever that's worth, here's what I think: One, there are a lot of legitimate businesses out there who are desperately in need of this $10,000. Giving those businesses an immediate cash infusion within three days of applying is going to help them out dramatically.

Now, it's understandable that that was the intention of the bill, and by making it so easy to apply, they probably had the intention of giving out too much money. Being too generous is going to be way better than giving out too little, but that also poses so many difficulties with actually implementing such an endeavor. Since it seems like this is just rushed out, it's inevitable that there's gonna be massive disorganization, and it's not going to go perfect.

It's like they either end up giving out ten thousand dollars to anyone who raises their hand on a first-come, first-served basis, and then they run out of money within a few days, or they find some sort of way to limit how much money each business gets so that that way, more businesses can get something instead of nothing, even if it was less money than they initially thought.

There's really not going to be a perfect solution to this besides the Fed just going and printing an unlimited amount of money. Whatever they decide to do, certain businesses will unfortunately be left out. Now, the wording on the bill is pretty horrible compared to the nuances that are now being released. Maybe they underestimated the number of people who were going to be applying, or they just didn't fully think it through.

But giving businesses the impression that they would be receiving $10,000 within three days of applying gives a lot of false hope, especially if people trust those words literally and make their plans around receiving $10,000. So obviously, like I said earlier, there should have been measures in place to prevent people from getting $10,000 who didn't actually need it. Like, if you don't even make $10,000 in a year from your business, then you probably shouldn't be receiving $10,000.

But there really should have been an option in place to state your economic loss so that that way, the $10,000 could be more accurately applied. This is going to be really interesting to see how this plays out over the next couple of weeks. It seems like the entire purpose of this emergency grant was to be issued as soon as possible because businesses needed money now, not weeks later.

I also would have liked to have seen more clarification upfront about what's going on because it seems like no one really knows. But given the nature of how quickly this stimulus package was passed, it's pretty much guaranteed there are going to be a lot of hiccups along the way and pretty much no one is going to know what is going on.

But as of now, as of the latest information that we have at our disposal at the time you're watching this, the money is supposed to be going out by sometime end of this week, maybe. And you're going to be getting $1,000 per listed employee, possibly. That is, of course, with the condition that nothing else changes from now until then, which it very well might.

Although, just understand something: like this was obviously rushed out, there's a lot of miscommunication, there's way too much that's entirely open to interpretation, and with the sheer amount of people applying, there are bound to be a lot of issues. I'm also just guessing that you'll be able to have the ability to contest the amount that you get if you're unhappy with it. So, like if you're a business making two million dollars a year with two employees and you only get $2,000, you might have the ability to go and provide information showing that yes, you do actually need up to $10,000, not just the two.

And who actually knows if that's going to be an uphill battle or if it's actually worth your time, but it might possibly be—we have no idea. And for anyone upset by this, it does seem like Twitter is the best place to go by tweeting the SBA and asking them for more clarification of what's going on and demanding that payment be released as soon as possible. But again, that's just from what I've seen so far.

If anyone has any other experiences or had any communication with the SBA, comment down below. Let me know. As usual, I'm going to be reading as many comments as I possibly can, so if you wouldn't mind doing that, give me more information to go off of for maybe future videos. Let me know, and I will be reading those as well.

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