The Employee Retention Credit (ERC) – sometimes called the Employee Retention Tax Credit or ERTC – is a refundable tax credit for certain eligible businesses and tax-exempt organizations that was introduced in March 2020.

For many clients we provided professional services to evaluate and prepare amended payroll tax returns to claim ERC. However, we did not evaluate eligibility or prepare amendments for all clients as many non-CPA firms were offering these services. Consequently, our firm does not have a complete listing of clients that have received monies from a refund request filing.

Note that once an ERC refund has been received, the organization is required to file an amended income tax return for the year in which the wage credit applies. If your entity has received ERC refunds please notify your Carter, P.C. professional so we can plan the filing of the amended income tax returns.

For all clients that we did not assist with evaluation and preparation of amended returns, we want to inform you of the IRS’ newly introduced voluntary disclosure program.

In late 2023 the IRS issued a press release expressing concerns regarding aggressive marketing by 3^rd party service providers urging businesses to submit claims. These concerns include the use of incorrect or incomplete information, discrepancies between records, excessive credits claimed and weak eligibility positions that may not be defensible.  To address this concern, the IRS has now launched the voluntary disclosure program.

This voluntary disclosure program is open until March 22, 2024, and only requires taxpayers to repay 80% of the total ERC and does not require penalties or interest to be paid.

For more details, please refer to the link to the IRS website provided below. Feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions or would like help participating in this program.

Employee Retention Credit – Voluntary Disclosure Program | Internal Revenue Service (irs.gov)