Confusion, worry escalate as small business owners seek financial relief from COVID-19

The COVID-19 crisis continues to hurt small business owners, whose efforts to ease their financial burdens through Paycheck Protection Program loans are being complicated by labyrinthine instructions and shaky guidance. Yahoo! Finance's Dan Roberts joins The Final Round to discuss the latest.

Video Transcript

JEN ROGERS: Dan Roberts, though, has been working on some stories on small businesses, as well, which many of them have been just living in Hangouts and Zoom and everything. How are they getting their jobs done? And how is applying for all the stimulus that we keep hearing about?

DAN ROBERTS: Yeah, Jen. It is remarkable, because the process for these PPP-- that Payroll Protection Program-- loans was supposed to open up, actually, last Thursday night at midnight. You know, Friday was being spoken of as the big day. And as we know, and as we recovered heavily on Yahoo Finance at the end of last week, Friday did not go so well for the big banks. A couple of them finally got up and running by Friday afternoon. We talked about that on this show.

But it took everyone awhile, mostly because-- and I'm rarely one to defend the banks-- but the guidance and instructions kept changing until as late as 11:00 PM Thursday night. And so a lot of small businesses were getting either site outages or notices in advance from their banks, saying, you know, before you even apply, we're not ready yet. Over the weekend, a lot of small businesses were able to apply and at least got confirmations of, you've submitted your application. You've basically done all you can do, but now don't contact us. Don't bother us to check. We'll contact you.

Except that now, there's sort of a completely revised guidance for any independent contractors-- those 1099 workers. The new rules being that those people have to apply for these loans on their own. So I talked today to a number of small business owners who some of their employees are full-time employees, some are technically independent contractors. You know, yes, they work full 9:00 to 5:00, but they're not full time, salaried employees. Those small business owners now have to completely redo their application for the PPP and not include any of those independent contractors.

The way the government views it, those independent contractors are basically their own business owners and the businesses themselves. So that is complicating things further-- that the guidance is changing yet again. And that separate application for PPP loans is going to start this coming Friday for those independent contractors. So suffice to say, all kinds of changing guidance, very difficult to get clear answers.

I spoke today to a number of business owners. I'll be telling their stories in a couple hours on Yahoo Finance. And it's just a tough situation. They all want help, they all want relief, but it's unclear whether they did the application right. I spoke to one person who's been on our Yahoo Finance program with me a couple of times-- Ken Golden, who runs Golden Auctions. Now, they sell sports collectibles.

And by the way, he said, look, I understand I'm not nearly as essential as people who sell Purell and toilet paper right now, but I am a small business owner and I have a number of employees. And he said that his biggest fear is he'll wait, wait, and wait, and finally in a few days he'll hear back from Chase and they'll say, you didn't do your application correctly. So there are a lot of unknowns right now for these business owners. It's a tough process. I mean, it's a $349 billion program-- bound to be a lot of. Wrinkles

JEN ROGERS: I just can't believe, in having talked to small business owners as well, the amount of paperwork involved. And then it seems like it keep changing what they need to be submitting. So I just talked to somebody that has a brewery up here and plans on submitting, and they were just asked for three more documents that then you need to go around and try and find. And remember-- we're all working from home. So some of these documents are different places as well.

DAN ROBERTS: Exactly right. And as you mentioned, the person you spoke to still has to submit more. Everyone right now is also afraid that the longer they take for their application process, the more, maybe, they won't get one, because there's a finite pool here of resources. And what if it's first come, first serve, and they get locked out? Now, you also make a really good point there on people aren't in the office, so they can't file payroll documents.

So I spoke to one business owner who her business actually helps colleges shift their classes from in-person to online. And you would think that this is actually a good time for her business, because a lot of colleges are doing that. The problem is the colleges don't have people in their offices to submit the documentation to hire a firm like hers to help them with that process. Instead, colleges are just telling professors, figure it out on your own. Figure out yourself how to do your classes remotely.