Des Moines, Iowa — According to District 1 State Representative John Wills, there is now a program to support sole proprietors and the self-employed through COVID-19 concerns.
Recently grants and loans were made available to small businesses to help them through the COVID-19 crisis. But those programs stipulated you had to have employees.
Wills says that the Iowa Economic Development Authority has now created a program to help sole proprietorship businesses. He says it’s called the “Targeted Small Business Sole Operator Relief Fund,” and the program is jointly administered by Iowa Economic Development Authority and the Iowa Center for Economic Success.
Wills says the program will provide grants of between $5,000-$10,000 to sole-proprietorship or single-member LLC businesses that are also certified as Targeted Small Businesses (TSB) by the State of Iowa. Businesses who are not currently certified as Targeted Small Businesses may submit a certification application by April 10th and be considered for assistance through the program.
Wills says applications are now available and will remain open until funds have been exhausted.
There are a few stipulations in addition to the Certified Targeted Small Business stipulation, the business must be able to demonstrate COVID-19 impact, must be the primary source of income for the business owner who is applying, and must have been in existence for 12 months prior to April 10th.
We are told you can apply online. Click here for the link.
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Original story posted Mar 25, 2020 at 12:06 a.m.
Des Moines, Iowa — In the last 24 hours, there have been announcements about COVID-19 loans and grants for small businesses. But these are for businesses that have employees.
We’ve been asked what people who are self-employed can do to get help from the state if they have no employees. Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds answered that question with what amounted to a “we’re working on it” answer during her daily press conference on Tuesday.
(as said:)”So we’re watching what they’re doing with the CARES Act in Washington DC. I don’t know. I haven’t heard that any thing’s moved as of yet. So we’re going to see that’s I think identified in the bill right now. And so but things are mobile, you know, it’s not finalized yet. So we’ll watch and see what happens with that and then we’ll see what we need to do from a state perspective.”
The CARES Act that the governor referred to is a bill proposed in the United States Senate by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). It is meant to address the economic fallout of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic in the United States.
The original $1 trillion bill includes $500 billion in checks for Americans, “$208 billion in loans for major industries that have been impacted by the coronavirus,” and “$300 billion for small businesses.”
