Andrew Milgram

So they got foisted on them this new thing where there was a separate filing that had to be done by companies.

The language of the legislation which passed under the CARES Act is that a company who had either a 20% decline in their revenue during the measurement period or had been substantially impacted by a government order.

By the way, not a federal government order, a government order.

So state, local, anything, qualified.

That's really loose language.

I think if the authors of that had opportunity to go back and rethink it, they might have.

And there's been a couple of attempts to.

Problem is getting anything done in Washington's hard these days.

So it is the law that's on the books.

Companies started to apply for this.

It is a separate filing.

It is a paper filing.

It requires you to go get some sign-off from your accounting firm or your auditors.

If you're going to do it responsibly, you need to put together a package that explains, should you be asked, why your claim is valid.

It's a fair amount of work.

And then the government was really slow in processing it.

Again, we have an overburdened IRS and an overburdened number of people that are working there.

So processing was just slow.

I think when the government did this, we've heard some estimates that say they anticipated it to be a $50 billion program.

About a year in, they had paid out $200 billion.