The House of Representatives has just passed their revisions to the Paycheck Protection Plan, 417-1. Their newly revised protection plan is set to go before the senate as soon as next week. Here are the changes the Senate will be voting on.

For one, the ratio in which money received goes to payroll, is up for change. Originally, this $660 Billion dollar fund stated that 75% of the loan given to small businesses must go to paying employees. The other 25% can go to anything else like rent or other overhead.

This ratio has been a problem for some businesses with large overhead. They insist this ratio isn’t allowing them to survive in times like these.

In response to this, there have been changes to the ratio bringing it to a very reasonable 60%-40% in which 60% goes to payroll. This opens up a significant portion of funds that can be used for expensive overhead or rent. Generally this is not as important for cleaning companies which tend to have lower overhead but it is good to know they are looking at providing some flexibility which will help those with large fleets of vehicles and equipment.

Secretary of the Treasury, Steve Mnuchin is very much opposed to this, however. He was quoted last week saying, “Let me remind people- It’s called the Paycheck Protection Plan. It’s not called the Overhead Protection Plan.”

This, however, was not the full extent of the changes. Some of which include: giving borrowers 24 weeks instead of 8 to spend funds, extending the deadline to rehire to December 31st, allowing repayment for non-forgiven balances over a course of five years instead of two(letting struggling businesses to pay smaller chunks over a longer period), and will allow PPP recipients to defer payroll taxes.

Mnuchin also disapproves of the latter. He says allowing PPP recipients to do so would be essentially double dipping, as the forgiven debts are already tax free.

However, the extension of the deadline for rehiring and allowing borrowers 24 weeks instead of 8 is a godsend for states like Michigan who are still closed. Without this extension business owners would have to spend two months worth of cash in two weeks, while trying to get staff back up to 100% capacity. I can’t even imagine the chaos that would bring to try and rush like that.

According to those who support the plan, they say they are on track to vote in the Senate by next week.

We’ve already talked a bit about this in our Facebook broadcast. If you want to keep up to date, join our Facebook page and watch the daily live streams with Tom and Liz. Their conversations about running a cleaning business during an epidemic are extremely helpful!

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