Resurrecting the Restaurant Revitalization Fund (RRF) was no easy task; multiple efforts met resistance, as I wrote about earlier. The RRF replenishment window officially closed March 8 when Congress did not include itand other COVID-19 relief in a bill to fund the federal government.
Grappling with ongoing challenges two years into the pandemic – most recently the omicron variant and record inflation — restaurants once again face stiff headwinds.
There are still 177,000 unfunded restaurant applicants, per the National Restaurant Association. “Thousands of neighborhood restaurants are going to close as a result of Congressional inaction on the Restaurant Revitalization Fund,” Erika Polmar, executive director of the Independent Restaurant Coalition, said in a statement.
While last week brought one headline with bad news, Wisconsin had its own small measure of good news.
On March 7, Gov. Tony Evers signed Assembly Bill 717 and Senate Bill 339 to assist Wisconsin restaurants.
The first creates an exemption under the Wisconsin individual income tax for grants received from the RRF and provides that expenses paid for by the proceeds of the grants are deductible if they would otherwise be ordinarily deductible. This conforms to the tax treatment adopted for Paycheck Protection Program forgiven loans.
The second federalizes Wisconsin’s treatment of the net capital loss deduction by increasing the amount of ordinary income that may be offset by net capital losses from $500 to $3,000 beginning in tax year 2023 and extends the increased maximum net capital loss offset to tax option corporations electing to be taxed at the entity level.
Gentle reminders:
- To sign up for no-cost, 1on-1 consulting, fill out the form on our restaurant page.
- To stay up to date anywhere and anytime, sign up for our restaurant newsletter.
