American Rescue Plan Act of 2021: Small Business Funding

By Lisbeth Lyons Black

On March 11, 2021, President Biden signed H.R. 1319, the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) passed by Congress one day earlier, into law. ARPA is the sixth major COVID-19 response legislation to become law since the spring of 2020. ARPA includes provisions aimed at small business economic recovery via Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL).

Specific PPP provisions of the new law include:

Appropriates an additional $7.25 billion to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) for the PPP program
Expands PPP eligibility to include:
- Additional tax-exempt nonprofits, such as 501(c)(5) labor and agricultural organizations and community locations of larger nonprofits, whose lobbying activities do not comprise more than 15 percent of its activities
- Internet publishing organizations assigned a North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) Code of 519130 and engaged in the collection and distribution of local or regional and national news and information
Adds COBRA premium assistance as an allowable payroll cost under the PPP program.
Lifts prior “affiliation rules” for 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(6) organizations. This means that an organization’s headcount would be considered “per physical location” rather than in-total and across all locations. As such, it allows both types of entities to be over the respective 500 and 300 employee thresholds if those employees are at multiple locations.
Program date expires March 31, 2021. (NOTE: PRINTING United Alliance is advocating that the White House and Congress extend the program date to eligible businesses through the end of Q3 2020. The more likely scenario is a Congressionally-approved extension through the end of Q2 2020; currently this approach enjoys bipartisan support on Capitol Hill.)

Specific EIDL provisions of the new law include:

Appropriates sector-specific aid in the amount of $15 billion to be used by SBA to provide $10,000 grants to small businesses eligible under Section 331 of the Economic Aid to Hard-Hit Small Businesses, Nonprofits, and Venues Act or Section 1110(e) of the CARES Act. (NOTE: Many businesses in this eligibility category are in key print customer verticals. Please share this information with your customers as it may be a lifeline for their companies.)

Please see SBA’s “Small Business Guidance & Loan Resources” online toolkit for additional information. An additional small business funding measure includes $10 billion to expand the State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI) to support up to $100 billion in small business financing through state, territorial and tribal governments. For more information on the SSBCI program administered by the US Department of Treasury can be found here.

The comprehensive ARPA also addressed funding and programs related to vaccines, school re-openings, state and local financial support, unemployment benefits, and health insurance, among other provisions. Special recovery programs aimed at economic sectors, such as the restaurant and live events venue sectors, were also included. An overview of ARPA provided by House Democrats can be found here (PDF). A more extensive summary of ARPA provided by the law firm Holland + Knight can be found here (PDF).

PRINTING United Alliance is committed to helping the industry learn how ARPA will affect the industry and member companies, their employees, and their customers. Please see our ARPA Break Out blog posts by topic to learn more. We will continue to update member companies with details of the implementation of ARPA as they roll out in order to help the printing industry best understand the new law’s applicability and requirements. As always, PRINTING United Alliance recommends speaking with your company’s tax professionals/consultants to learn how best to apply these new provisions to assist your business.

In this article, Lisbeth addresses the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) of 2021. More information about ARPA can be found at www.sgia.org or reach out to Lisbeth should you have additional questions specific to how these issues may affect your business: llyons@printing.org.

To become a member of PRINTING United Alliance and learn more about how PRINTING United Alliance subject matter experts can assist your company with services and resources such as those mentioned in this article, please contact the Alliance membership team: 888-385-3588 / membership@printing.org.