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“They thought about servers and people who had lost their jobs, and they thought about big business. But the small business, it feels like a throwaway. It feels like we were an absolute afterthought.”
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— Mitchell Moore, Jackson restaurateur and baker.
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With No Relief In Sight, Business Owners Struggle by Seyma Bayram
courtesy Emmie King
Emmie King, who is working to save her candy manufacturing and retail business, Nandy’s Candy, is concerned that the timeline on which PPP and SBA loans operate do not take into account the more recent cost increases businesses may have incurred.
a payroll. But if a person is self-employed and files a schedule C on their tax returns, and their contractors pay that individual directly, the self-employed person can apply for PPP even without a payroll. They can instead report losses in their net income. Although he is grateful for the relief options available to small-business owners struggling because of the novel coronavirus, Paige wishes the packages were more inclusive of all industries. “It does limit my options,” Paige said. He recently worked with his accountant to apply for the low-interest Economic Injury Disaster Loan through the Small Business Administration—his most promising option at the moment. He also applied for unemployment benefits. Paige is concerned about the pressure the SBA loan places on small businesses to take out additional loans. Most small business owners must already incur
debt in order to be able to start a business, he explained. “I would have liked to see a little more grant money or an easier way to do the grant money than the loan, because as a business owner, we already have loans that we are paying back, so we’re actually adding more debt to our debt-to-income ratio,” Paige said. “Now we’ve got the choice of completely going broke or going out of business or taking on more debt that we’re still going to have to pay off when we already had debt we were paying (off),” he said. Paige is also concerned about the confusion stemming from the SBA loan application process. “I heard from other business owners they’re having a hard time just getting the process done. Some just don’t know to go apply for some of this stuff,” he said. He has been using his own social-
media pages to direct his network toward online unemployment, SBA, and PPP applications. Just six days ago, he had to resubmit his unemployment application because his previous application suddenly disappeared from the Mississippi Department of Employee Security website. Impact on Black Businesses The COVID-19 pandemic has hit small businesses, which typically do not have more than two weeks’ worth of working capital funds at any given time, especially hard in recent weeks. Despite the fact that the SBA has promised small business owners up to $2 million in loans each for damages due to COVID-19, many businesses are struggling to secure even a fraction of what was offered to them. In addition to long processing times, on April 9, the SBA began notifying those more BUSINESS STRUGGLE, p 8
April 15 - 28, 2020 • jfp.ms
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ike many small-business owners, Chris Paige had to abruptly close the doors of his south Jackson barber shop, Custom Cuts & Styles, because of COVID-19. That decision has not only cost him, but also the three other barbers who work inside his business. “That really affects me because you know, I just hate to have to see someone out of work. Because that’s how we feed our families,” the father of three girls told the Jackson Free Press in early April. A native of Jackson’s Washington Addition neighborhood, Paige has been a licensed barber for 21 years, though he has been cutting hair for longer. After working for others for nearly a decade, the former Academy of Hair Design instructor saw an opportunity in 2010 to invest in south Jackson, an area he knew intimately since childhood. Paige found a storefront on Terry Road—a well-traveled thoroughfare that promised to bring in a lot of customers— and applied for and received a City of Jackson small-business development grant. This August will mark the barbershop’s 10-year anniversary. He also opened Paige Barber Supply two years ago. The supply store, too, is closed because of the pandemic. Paige does not have employees on payroll. Like many other barbershop and salon owners, he rents out space in his shop to other barbers, who function as independent contractors with their own clientele. As such, he is not sure that he is eligible for the Payroll Protection Plan. “I have people that subcontract inside the shop with me. … They don’t get a W2, I don’t pay them,” Paige said. “The money that they were paying me for their chair—I don’t know how I can be compensated for that because they’re not my employees,” he added. Paige’s eligibility for PPP depends on whether he is a self-employed, sole proprietor or operating as an entity, Jackson-based attorney David Humphreys confirmed to the Jackson Free Press on April 14. For an entity—such as an LLC or S-corp partnership—to be eligible for PPP, they must have
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