The American Dental Association (ADA) recently sent the following update to members regarding the new COVID-19 relief package passed by Congress.

Note: The President signed the bill on Dec. 27, read an update from ADA News here.

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Congress Passes COVID Relief

Your advocacy has paid off!

After thousands of grassroots emails from ADA members, as well as extensive lobbying from the ADA’s Government Affairs team, Congress has passed an end of the year package. The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 funds the government through the end of fiscal year 2021 and also includes COVID relief. The President is expected to sign this bill into law soon.

The bill contains numerous key provisions of significant importance to you, your practice and your patients, including:

• Making expenses paid for with the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans tax deductible.
• Eliminating the requirement that PPP loan forgiveness would be reduced by the amount of the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) grant that was received by the business.
• Allowing PPP borrowers to utilize the Employee Retention Tax Credit (ERTC). The bill also increases the wage cap and percentage of eligible wages for that credit.

Here is a summary of other pertinent relief efforts included in this Act:

Paycheck Protection Program
The PPP will be re-opened and a second round of PPP funds will be made available to help ensure our nation’s small business dental practices can remain open, retain their employees and provide their patients with much-needed care. This additional PPP eligibility will be limited to small businesses with 300 or fewer employees that had a 25% revenue loss in any quarter of 2020, and there will be additional funding set aside for businesses with 10 or fewer employees.

Additional PPP reforms include:

• Easing the forgiveness process for loans of $150,000 or less.
• Allowing borrowers to use PPP to purchase personal protective equipment (PPE) and make facility modifications for COVID-19 protection.
• Granting 501(c)(6) organizations access to the new round of PPP loans.

We will be providing more details about these provisions in the coming weeks. An updated fact sheet that includes additional specifics on PPP and EIDL grants can be found here.

Other Significant Funding Provisions
The Act includes $3 billion in additional grants for hospital and health care providers to be reimbursed for health care related expenses or lost revenue directly attributable to the public health emergency resulting from coronavirus. The bill also includes direction to allocate not less than 85% of unobligated funds from the Provider Relief Fund through an application-based portal to reimburse health care providers for financial losses attributable to coronavirus and incurred in the third or fourth quarter of calendar year 2020, or the first quarter of calendar year 2021.

The Act provides more money for testing, tracing and vaccines. It also extends mandatory funding for Community Health Centers ($4 billion), the National Health Service Corps ($310 million), and the Teaching Health Center Graduate Medical Education Program ($27 million) for each fiscal year through 2023.

The ADA is proud to support dentists as they continue serving their communities during these difficult times. Together, we are driving dentistry forward on its path to recovery. Be sure to visit ADA.org/COVID19Advocacy for regular updates.