03/23/2020

Association-led Coalition Calls for Small Business Funding

The coalition is urging quick government action to avert layoffs and business closures

An AICPA-led coalition including payroll processors Paychex and Intuit as well as the International Franchise Association is calling for a federal funding mechanism to help small businesses affected by the coronavirus outbreak make payroll.

“As the federal government focuses its attention on America’s economic engine — small businesses and their millions of employees — direct funding of their payroll can help,” a letter signed on Saturday by the coalition’s leaders states. “The problem: It takes time to create new processes to distribute funds to small businesses — speed is of the essence here. An efficient and effective process would be to leverage established small business payroll processing that is already in place and can be marshalled immediately to protect jobs and preserve resiliency within the small business sector.”

In the letter to President Donald Trump, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Administrator of the Small Business Administration Jovita Carranza and members of Congress, the group urges the creation of a central payroll funding account that small business payroll processors could use so that small businesses could continue paying workers amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused widespread business disruption.

Please select this link to read the complete article from The Journal of Accountancy.