The Next Frontier: Financing the ERC

January 11, 2023 | By: Sean Murray

FEATURE STORY

“I have never sold a product that has no daily, no weekly, or no monthly payments,” said David Goldin. That is until now, he explained, because of the Employee Retention Credit from the IRS that’s sweeping the country. Goldin’s new company, Finance ERC, that he co-founded with Newtek co-founder Jeffrey Rubin, is buying the future ERC receivables of small businesses that have filed for it. A key feature? No payments.

“You basically drop off the money, they don’t pay you out of cash flow, we get paid when the checks arrive,” Goldin said. “It’s an amazing offering.”

Goldin is no stranger to the SMB finance game. He is one of the reasons that the MCA product exists today in the United States. A documentary about it was the second most watched in all of 2022, for example. And he’s still a busy guy. One of his other businesses, Capify, finances small businesses on two continents every day.

“I’m busy in the morning with the UK and I’m busy at night with Australia, but I had a lot of free time during the day,” he said about how he was able to pursue yet another venture. “I approached Jeff and we were seeing that there was a gap in the market that the checks don’t arrive.”

The ERC, a potentially generous tax credit available to eligible businesses, has recently enjoyed greater awareness since it was included in the March 2020 CARES Act. Businesses that qualify can amend previous returns to receive a refund. Folks in the small business finance industry, already in direct communication with businesses about their financial needs, have taken notice.

Finance ERC won’t do the filing itself for a business. They have to had filed already to seek out the funding, which can go up to $1 million at present. It’s the waiting game between filing and actually receiving the refund that leaves merchants in a crunch. Goldin said the wait time is “best case scenario three months, worst case scenario a year plus.” And there’s no guarantee that the claims will be paid. That’s a risk they bear.

The deals come in from a variety of sources, business loan brokers, MCA platforms, ERC filing companies and more. The funding amounts can be significantly larger than an MCA and with no payments to be made, is incredibly competitive. A number of other financial service providers are charging a fee just for helping the businesses file for the credit in the first place, which in itself can be lucrative, but Finance ERC sticks just to the funding.

“We work with the funding companies, we work with the brokers, the various ISOs, it’s a great product,” Goldin said.

But the life span of the ERC is purportedly capped. Some experts say that businesses can only amend their 2020 tax return through April 2024 and their 2021 return through April 2025 [dyor]. But then that’s supposed to be it, allegedly.

“That presumes the government is not going to offer any future tax incentives,” Goldin said. “What we’re building at Finance ERC is a platform to finance tax credits. [The ERC] is the first credit.”

The opportunity, he explained, is preparing now for what may repeat often in the future.

“We put together the right players and vendors,” Goldin said. “We’ve hired a super senior management team.” It’s a system that includes sales, marketing, operations, finance, underwriting and more, to be prepared to scale.

But even in the present, opportunity abounds.

“The best estimates I’ve read are 5-6 million ERC are still eligible,” Goldin said. “People in this industry call it America’s best kept secret.”

And thus as marketing of the ERC continues to grow all around, Finance ERC is ready to work with businesses, brokers, and filers going through the process. Businesses can even use the funding from Finance ERC to pay the fee to file in the first place.

“So now all of a sudden they put the risk to me which I’m happy to do for a file that we like, and I pay the filing company / the broker gets paid right away,” Goldin said.

Last modified: January 13, 2023