The portal is meant to greatly speed up the loan forgiveness process
There is good news for owners who have received PPP loans and now seek loan forgiveness. The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) intends to make applying for forgiveness faster, more accessible, and easier through an online portal.
On Wednesday, August 4th, the SBA opened a PPP loan forgiveness portal for those whose loans amount to $150,000 or less. The purpose of the portal, according to the SBA, is to make it easier for the millions of small business owners who took out PPP loans. According to the SBA, almost 7 million PPP loans are still not forgiven, and over 90 percent of PPP loans are eligible for forgiveness through the portal. The SBA will handle the forgiveness requests directly and says applying for forgiveness will only take a few minutes with the new portal.
“While the PPP provided much-needed economic relief to struggling small businesses, it challenged owners with administrative mix-ups and issues from the start,” said NFIB Research Center Executive Director Holly Wade. “The latest issue is lenders not processing forgiveness applications and we’re hopeful the SBA’s new portal will address this problem for small business owners.”
In addition, the SBA intends to lessen the amount of paperwork some borrowers need to supply to receive forgiveness. Specifically, borrowers who received a second-draw PPP loan in 2021 and whose loan was worth less than $150,000 will no longer need to prove that they suffered a 25 percent revenue reduction in 2020. Instead, the SBA will use internal metrics.
To learn more about the PPP loan forgiveness process, read NFIB experts’ breakdown of the process here and watch the latest webinar here. To find out if your lender is participating in direct forgiveness through SBA, view the SBA’s list of lenders participating in direct forgiveness.
