26 March 2020
If you are interested in information about financial assistance for small business, please review the information presented below.
Stay safe and we’ll continue to keep you posted!
There is help….
The House and Senate are working towards approving a variety of legislation passages that will help the general public as well as small and large business. In a vote last night the Senate approved a bill that has gone to the House for their review.
At this time, based on what information is available it does not appear that the bill approved by the Senate contained any language specific to the repossession or auto lending industries. Again, it does NOT appear at this time that THIS bill would prevent repossessions currently or for any specific amount of time after the pandemic is declared over.
While this bill is still making its way to law – there are still questions about the legality of repossession. Several states classify repossession services by the NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) code: 561491. Several states have defined their Essential vs. Non-Essential businesses by this code and some have specifically listed repossession services as non-essential, Delaware, Vermont are included in those states. Please however be sure to check with your state and/or local jurisdiction if you have questions if you can repossess or not; many states have indicated it will be up to county or city level decision making.
You still should be sending notice to your representatives about not supporting any measure that would include such language. We’ve spoken to many of you who have said that you have shared the letter with others and that is exactly what we wanted you to do. But you should also make sure that your current, former, or laid off employees send the same letter and any voting member of their household should send the same letter. The entire point of the letter was to show how many people could be affected by a decision to cease all collection/repossession efforts for any extended period of time.
That being said, we have compiled a list of states that have information available about how small businesses, which would include you, can get information about obtaining small business loans or grants. Many states have expedited the process, become more flexible with the requirements or terms and even have information about grants that may not have to be paid back.
Those states not listed individually here are referring business owners directly to the Small Business Administration for information.
This information continues to change day by day, hour by hour and at times minute by minute. We are doing our best keep everyone posted as we learn more as situations continue to change!
All 50 States – for states not listed, please be sure to contact the Federal SBA with this link: SBA Disaster Assistance in Response to the Coronavirus