On December 20, 2019, President Trump signed H.R. 1865 which funds domestic spending for FY 2020. A tax title was added which would extend WOTC, the hiring incentive for Empowerment Zones and the Indian Employment Credit through December 31, 2020. Also included in the package is the disaster tax relief hiring incentive. The domestic spending title on includes a $2,500,000 increase in WOTC funding for FY 2020 to help the state workforce agencies to modernize WOTC processing and clean up existing processing backlogs. This is the first increase in administrative funding in over twenty years
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H.R. 1865 passed the House on December 17, 2019, by a vote of 297 to 120 and the Senate on December 19, 2019, by a vote of 71 to 23. Adding the tax title was in question up till the last minute and it was only added on December 16. We have been told that the active grassroots efforts of WOTC supporters played a significant part in persuading Congress to add a tax title.
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The tax title to H.R. 1865 entitled the “Tax Payer Certainty and Disaster Relief Act of 2019” includes the following provisions:
> An extension of WOTC through 2020
> An extension from January 1, 2018 through December December 31, 2020 of:
– The Empowerment Zone hiring incentive and
– The Indian Employment Credit
> A Disaster Tax Relief retention credit for those who remained on an employer’s payroll in an area which was designated as a federally “qualified disaster zone” between January 1, 2018 and sixty days after enactment which occurred on December 20, 2019. Any disaster which occurs after February 18, 2020 would not qualify, and
> The spending provisions of H.R. 1865, increases WOTC funding by $2,500,000 from an FY 2019 funding level of $19,800,000 to $21,423,000 for FY 2020