Is there more food at the table? There will be, if Senators Cardin, Brown and Murray have anything to say about it.
In late January, 2023, Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md) alongside Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Patty Murray (D-Wash) reintroduced the Restaurant Revitalization Tax Credit Act, which attempts to alleviate the financial gap for restaurants who were left out of RRF funding last June. This is a majority of business owners, comprising nearly two-thirds of applicants or 175,000 U.S. businesses who did not receive RRF funding.
Senator Cardin, Chair of the Senate Committee on Small Business, says that RRF was a “timely program that simply did not have enough funds to cover the intense demand.” In an effort to bridge this divide, he and his Senate cohorts introduced the Tax Credit Act on January 23, 2023.
What are the important highlights of the Restaurant Revitalization Tax Credit Act:
- For eligible employers, it will offset payroll taxes of up to $25,000 per quarter in 2023.
- For businesses with 10 or fewer employees, the credit is refundable up to a total of $25,000 over the course of the year.
- The credit is open only to businesses that applied and were eligible to receive RRF grants.
- Eligible businesses must have experienced operating losses of at least 30% in 2020 and 2021 as compared to 2019 or losses of 50% in either 2020 and 2021 as compared to 2019.
- Eligible businesses must have been in operation prior to March 14, 2020 and paid payroll tax for at least two quarters in 2021.
Why Now?
“Restaurants, as an industry, continue to be one of the hardest hit from the pandemic. In addition, they are also struggling with rising inflation, supply chain issues and so on. Any assistance we can give to the bread and butter of our communities is important,” says Raj Tulshan, founder of Loan Mantra.
Speaking about local restaurant owners, Chairman Cardin states, “This tax credit will help ease their burden. It will support the restaurants we love while helping to boost our local economies.”