Education
Schools and Employee Retention Credits (ERC)
Schools (charter schools, preschools, daycares, private schools, and private universities) are still dealing with the aftermath of the challenges of the pandemic. COVID orders meant that many core services, such as extracurricular activities, speech & hearing services, physical & occupational therapy, health services, IEP evaluations, audiology, social work, counseling, psychological services, in-person learning, residential living, and special education services, dining services, rehabilitative and rehabilitative services, were either suspended or significantly altered. The cumulative effect is that two years after the pandemic, schools are trying to address the unfinished learning and decline in student wellbeing. ERC credits are one of the key COVID relief programs to help schools invest in their students, young children through adults, to get everyone back to where they should be both developmentally and academically.
Schools are often eligible for ERC credits under the CARES Act and relevant IRS guidance because COVID orders interrupted school services and forced educators to pivot to options that were less effective than their traditional methods. The tax experts on Sycamore’s Education Team will work with your school to document how your students were affected by COVID-19 restrictions. This documentation enables us to build a research brief that outlines the school’s ERC eligibility under the tax code. At Sycamore, our goal is to enable our clients to receive the credits that they are legitimately and legally eligible for, not more and not less.
The declaration deadline for ERC’s is 2025, so there is still time to obtain these credits. Because of our thorough process, Sycamore has secured substantially larger credits for our education clients than our clients expected to receive. We have also discovered that there is often confusion around the number of employees (specifically how the number of employees should be counted under the law) that a school can have in order to claim ERC credits. This misunderstanding has kept many schools from applying for and receiving ERC’s. Please contact Sycamore for clear guidance on this issue.
There are currently many companies that provide ERC services, and many of these companies only opened their doors after COVID and because of ERC credits. Sycamore has been providing expert tax consulting since 2011. Even before COVID and ERCs, we had many years of experience helping our clients document and receive research and development tax credits, job creation tax credits, employee training tax credits, and other specialty grants. We have long-term relationships with our clients and their accounting firms, and these relationships are built on accuracy, trust, and expertise.
Sycamore has helped the following educational organizations:
Colleges
Universities
Charter Schools
Private Schools
Pre-schools
Daycares