Follow the money straight to COVID

by William Clark

COVID hit hard, there is no doubt in anybody’s mind that America as a people was unprepared but how about the economy? Did COVID punch above its weight when fighting the American dollar?

Ohioans have felt the effects of COVID and seen the effects of COVID with many major public businesses and open events being shut down due to their high density. The local government has stepped in to try to mitigate the problems caused by shutting down an entire and sometimes the only source of revenue a business owner has. Ohio Chamber of Commerce along with Gov. DeWine has decided to institute Coronavirus induced unemployment pay along with allowing employers to more loosely manage employee payment with the changing times in Executive Order 2020-03D. The federal government also stepped in with EIDLs (meant to help entire small businesses with the loss of revenue issues) and the SBA Paycheck Protection Program (meant to help business owners who would struggle with financial needs due to loss of revenue like paying employees).

So the government, local and national have played their hands quite quickly to alleviate issues. Business was hurting quite badly on the small scale but how does it look now? Is there a light at the end of the tunnel or is it going down like the Stock Market did back on Feb. 20th?

Small scale business people were most affected by the sudden change in lifestyle like Joe Joyce, a guitar store owner with one location that also has a website, known as Guitar Guys based in Heath.

Joe admitted that he was lucky and smart. Joe had to expand his store online and was able to finish it during the enforced lockdown early on in the outbreaks in Ohio. Even then Joe was still paying rent for his mall location, two high-cost payments without any stimulus and Joe stated that “the EIDL only paid for like a month and a half worth of rent”. Joe had taken on the EIDL and SBA and he hasn’t worried about anything else except those two government payouts. Joe had made a point about how there has been no transparency on these payouts and Joe is worried that taking on both helping hands is gonna actually bite him in the back. Joe had specifically worried about how “the government is going to make this money they gave out back”. Joe had mentioned himself that he was “fortunate” during these trying times. Joe had made some lucky moves at the right time but even though he got out well enough he still worries for the future as it is very uncertain.

This is a very understandable concern as nobody truly knows how many had to fully shut down. Truly everybody is afraid of the future as many barely survived the present. Another voice of calm and reason has his thoughts on the matter, Matthew Clark an accountant for the city of Columbus.

Matthew has no reason to believe that the government will swing around to get the money back on those business owners who took an EIDL. He does believe there is a more likely chance that the SBA might be charged back on by the government as it was used to help keep employees employed. Matthew had many more complaints about the Tax Deferral Program instituted in early August stating it was “ridiculous and stupid”. (The Tax Deferral is a program set up by the IRS and Trump Administration meant to help give employees a revenue boost as they don’t have to pay the 6.2% tax for Social Security) he was so critical of this program be all in all it won’t change anything unless Trump can push through something that’ll forgive those who took on the Tax Referral. Matthew believes there is “no cause for concerns as the federal government gave out the EIDL and so there is not going to be any roundabout return payments on the loan. The SBA might be different, I don’t know.”

Another bit of info concerning Corona and Ohio business everybody was right to assume that it did hit hard, harder than anybody truly expected. Right now we’re on the road to recovery, a road people are handling differently compared to others as some are cautious and worry about the future others seem quite calm yet still don’t understand the details that entail tomorrow. Hopefully, we’ll see a lot of positive on the global scale the economy concerning the major American companies seems to have recovered okay but certainty is not affordable until COVID has been fully taken care of. It’ll take time to fully realize what happened to the businesses of Ohio and hopefully once realized we can go beyond fixing what happened and make a better Ohio.