Home Equipping Leaders Stewardship Churches Seeking the U.S. Government’s 'Employee Retention Credit'

Churches Seeking the U.S. Government’s 'Employee Retention Credit'

By Ken Sloane

Wespath gcfa

Bryan Mills, Interim General Counsel at the General Council on Finance & Administration (GCFA) has provided the following caution for churches planning on requesting the Employee Retention Credit for church staff.

"Unfortunately, the definition of ‘wages’ used in the context of the Employee Retention Credit provided by the CARES Act is one that, in other contexts in the Tax Code, does not include amounts paid to ministerial employees. There was some initial hope that the IRS would use a different interpretation of the term for this credit, but that hope was dashed when it released its FAQ (see example 1 in question 58).

"Compensation paid by your church to ministerial employees cannot be used in calculating the amount of credit it can claim."

You may download this document of guidance prepared by GCFA and Wespath.

Click here to explore more helpful GCFA resources on COVID-19 for churches.

Click here to explore Discipleship Ministries COVID-19 resources.

Ken Sloane is the Director of Stewardship & Generosity for Discipleship Ministries of The United Methodist Church.

Contact Us for Help

View staff by program area to ask for additional assistance.

Related


Subscribe

* indicates required

Please confirm that you want to receive email from us.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. For information about our privacy practices, please read our Privacy Policy page.

We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By clicking below to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy practices here.