Arsip Bulanan: April 2021

For businesses, it created a new Employee Retention Credit (ERC) against employment taxes, which was intended to encourage them to retain and pay their employees during any quarter when business operation was partially or fully suspended due to the coronavirus. In order to provide liquidity to the hardest-hit businesses and industries, the CARES Act allocated $500 billion for economic stabilization loans and guarantees. A total of $10 billion in emergency grants was authorized for small businesses, private nonprofits, sole proprietorships, agricultural co-ops, and employee-owned firms and could be converted into advances on forgivable loans as outlined above. However, it specifically excluded people who could continue their jobs working remotely or already were being paid sick leave or other leave benefits. Eligibility for unemployment benefits was extended to those who otherwise would not qualify if their loss of work was related to the COVID-19 pandemic. This included contractors and the self-employed, those whose existing benefits had been exhausted, those seeking only part-time employment, and those with insufficient employment history.

Relief to individuals

Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect and to have access to quality care. That’s why, today, Vice President Harris is announcing two landmark final rules that fulfill the President’s commitment to safety in care, improving access to long-term care and the quality of caregiving jobs. Ensuring that all Americans, including older Americans and people with disabilities, have access to care – including home-based care – that is safe, reliable, and of high quality is an important part of the President’s agenda and a part of the President’s broader commitment to care. Income, race/ethnicity, asset levels, employment, and gender were all predictive of delays in CARES Act receipt. One explanation is that the way the government administered the Economic Impact Payments required individuals to go through a separate process to receive the payments if they didn’t file their taxes, receive a refund, and have direct deposit set up with the IRS. If they didn’t file their taxes, they had to use one of the IRS online tools to access payments.

Former cop illegally owned business, took $246,000+ in COVID relief loans, authorities say

They said his arrest warrant shows how his PPP application contradicted bank records and testimony from former employees, and that he got a larger loan by misrepresenting his number of employees, monthly payroll, business revenue, and expenses. Dennis Corp. and Dennis fully cooperated in the investigation and resolution of this matter. In accordance with the terms of the settlement agreement, Dennis Corp. and Dennis will pay a total of $2.5 million plus interest.

South Carolina Construction Company and Its Owner Settle Matter Alleging Receipt of Improper CARES Act Loans

• Both state health programs have had to cover transgender health care since lower federal district courts ruled in favor of the patients in 2022, she says.
• For example, if an out-of-work person is receiving the national average of about $340 per week, under the new federal program their take-home pay will be $940.
• Establishing minimum staffing standards for nursing homes is a critical step in the Biden-Harris Administration’s comprehensive approach to building a long-term care system where all older Americans can age with dignity.
• District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia to the felony charge of conspiring to impede the IRS.
• As a result of Dennis’s false certification on the PPP and EIDL applications, Dennis Corp. received more than $1.5 million in loans to which it was not entitled.

He has been arrested and/or charged with an additional 23 felony and 26 misdemeanor offenses throughout his life, including passing bad checks, trespassing, identity theft, fraudulent use of a credit card, burglary, and possessing a dangerous weapon. Ruth has not gone a single year in his life in which he has not been arrested and/or convicted for some type of fraud or other criminal offense. SPRINGFIELD, Mo. – A Deepwater, Mo., man was sentenced in federal court today for fraudulently obtaining more than $500,000 in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. For additional information on the rules issued today, please consult the CMS fact sheets on nursing home staffing standards, Access, and Managed Care. To make sure nursing homes have the time they need to hire necessary staff, the requirements of this rule will be introduced in phases, with longer timeframes for rural communities. Limited, temporary exemptions will be available for both the 24/7 registered nurse requirement and the underlying staffing standards for nursing homes in workforce shortage areas that demonstrate a good faith effort to hire.

Coronavirus Relief Fund

The CARES Act also allowed taxpayers to take an above-the-line deduction from adjusted gross income of up to $300 for charitable contributions and relaxed other limits on charitable contributions. Fifty percent of payroll tax payments for 2020 were due in 2021, with the other 50% due in 2022. The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) applied to any business, nonprofit organization, veterans organization, or tribal business that had fewer than 500 employees—or, under the Small Business Administration standard, had under 500 employees per physical location for all food service and accommodation businesses.

Paid Family and Medical Leave Insurance (FAMLI)

Title IV, Subtitle B of the CARES Act provides up to $32 billion of direct financial assistance to passenger and cargo air carriers and respective contractors that must exclusively be used for the continuation of payments of employees’ wages, salaries, and benefits. Title V of the CARES Act established the Coronavirus Relief Fund for the purpose of providing $150 billion in direct assistance to States, units of local government, the District of Columbia, U.S. Territories, and Tribal Governments. The “Ensuring Access to Medicaid Services” final rule, finalized today, will help improve access to home care services as well as improve the quality caregiving jobs through its new provisions for home care. Specifically, the rule will ensure adequate compensation for home care workers by requiring that at least 80 percent of Medicaid payments for home care services go to workers’ wages.

Ruth, who was convicted in 2018 of filing false or fraudulent tax returns, falsely claimed on his PPP loan documents that he had not been convicted of a fraud offense within the last five years of applying for these loans. According to the article, nearly $7 billion under the CARES Act were delivered to potentially ineligible businesses reported in January 2021. Not only do these frauds result in a loss of taxpayer money and encourage future fraud crimes, but they disadvantage future Congresses and create unfairness to those who followed the rules. Lukey offered solutions for a fraud tip line and state/federal workshare agreements that may improve investigation and prosecution and help prevent future cases. For example, “Conversations between our governor and attorney general on the one hand and our federal Congressional delegation and U.S. attorney on the other could produce a myriad of positive actions, scalable to the lower dollar level of the schemes,” she wrote. The Managed Care rule defines the scope of “in lieu of services and settings” (ILOS) services in managed care to better address enrollees’ health-related social needs (e.g., support for housing- and nutrition-related services).

As such, Treasury faces immense challenges in ensuring that the programs achieve their intended purpose, provide for accountability and transparency, and are free from fraud and abuse. As such, our audit and investigative oversight of Treasury’s implementation of Title IV and V are to evaluate management’s accountability, control, and oversight of the Department’s funds and provide recommendations for improving operations and preventing fraud, waste, and abuse with respect to those funds. For employers with more than 100 full-time employees, the credit is for wages paid to employees when they are not providing services because of the coronavirus. Eligible employers with 100 or fewer full-time employees could use the deduction even if they aren’t closed. This bill adds $600 per week from the federal government on top of whatever base amount a worker receives from the state.

• The Senate approved the CARES Act in a unanimous vote, with 96 in favor and zero against, on March 25, 2020.
• Paid leave in a PTO policy, or a Collective Bargaining Agreement, can satisfy HFWA, if it covers all the same conditions or needs, at the same pay rate, and with no tougher requirements (documentation, notice, etc.) than HFWA (see Colorado Wage Protection Rules, specifically Rules 3.5.4 and 3.5.8).
• On the other hand, the fact that roughly half of our households were still waiting for unemployment at the time of the survey likely means that large proportions of the most vulnerable—those with low incomes or low savings, or those with children, for example—were stuck in a very precarious situation.
• Another $350 billion was paid out in forgivable loans to small businesses to subsidize their payrolls during the disruption of the pandemic.
• Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect and to have access to quality care.
• The Biden-Harris Administration believes that by improving working conditions and wages, improvements in the recruitment and retention of direct care workers will follow, enabling nursing staff to provide safer, higher quality care to all residents within nursing homes.

Additionally, disparities in the receipt of these benefits are important because we know that different populations were already much more vulnerable to economic shocks prior to the pandemic. A large body of research demonstrates that low-income households face a combination of low emergency savings and financial volatility that leaves them at regular risk of hardships like food insecurity, eviction, and so on. Related work from the Federal Reserve shows that in 2019—when the economy was close to its pre-pandemic peak—roughly 30 percent of U.S. households could either not currently pay their bills or were one financial setback away from not being able to pay their bills. Additionally, it shows that Black households, Hispanic households, and those with lower educational attainment were uniquely vulnerable. In light of this, it is essential to understand the degree to which these economically vulnerable populations were able to actually access government benefits during this economic crisis.

The settlement resolves a lawsuit filed under the whistleblower provision of the False Claims Act, which permits private parties, called relators, to file suit on behalf of the United States for false claims and share in a portion of the government’s recovery. The legislation would enable all Ohioans to have access to all necessary healthcare at no cost at the point of care. Corporate providers, i.e. hospitals, drug companies, health insurers, and media whom legislators serve, would have their “oxen gored.” So expect that Ohio will continue to lag far behind, (44th place in the current Health Policy Institute of Ohio rankings) paying too much, and getting too little.

Pandemi Covid-19 telah memberikan gambaran atas kelangsungan dunia pendidikan di masa depan melalui bantuan teknologi. Namun, teknologi tetap tidak dapat menggantikan peran guru, dosen, dan interaksi belajar antara pelajar dan pengajar sebab edukasi bukan hanya sekedar memperoleh pengetahuan tetapi juga tentang nilai, kerja sama, serta kompetensi. Situasi pandemi ini menjadi tantangan tersendiri bagi kreativitas setiap individu dalam menggunakan teknologi untuk mengembangkan dunia pendidikan. Demikian dikatakan Direktur Jenderal Pendidikan Tinggi Kemendikbud, Nizam, pada acara Medan International Conference on Energy and Sustainability, Selasa (27/10).

“Saat ini pandemi menjadi tantangan dalam mengembangkan kreativitas terhadap penggunaan teknologi, bukan hanya transmisi pengetahuan, tapi juga bagaimana memastikan pembelajaran tetap tersampaikan dengan baik,” tutur Nizam.

Pada saat yang bersamaan, lanjut Nizam, tantangan ini juga menjadi kesempatan bagi semua tentang bagaimana penggunaan teknologi dapat membantu membawa mahasiswa dan pelajar menjadi kompeten untuk abad ke-21. Keterampilan yang paling penting pada abad ke-21 ialah self-directed learning atau pembelajar mandiri sebagai outcome dari edukasi.

Nizam menjelaskan masa pandemi ini dapat melatih serta menanamkan kebiasaan menjadi pembelajar mandiri melalui berbagai kelas daring atau webinar yang diikuti oleh mahasiswa. Selain itu, mahasiswa juga dapat bekerja sama satu dengan yang lain untuk menyelesaikan permasalahan dalam pembelajaran serta menghadapi permasalahan nyata yang ada. Ia pun menambahkan bahwa situasi ini bukan hanya menjadi tantangan bagi mahasiswa, namun juga para dosen dalam menyampaikan edukasi dimana para dosen perlu memastikan bahwa mahasiswa memahami materi pembelajaran.

“Pembelajaran daring menjadi tantangan bagi dunia pendidikan dengan situasi Indonesia yang memiliki ribuan pulau. Bagaimana teknologi dapat digunakan, bagaimana penyediaan akses internet pada daerah-daerah terpencil dimana barang elektronik tanpa akses internet pun masih menjadi suatu kemewahan. Ini merupakan tantangan bagi semua pihak, saat ini kita harus bekerja keras bersama bagaimana membawa teknologi menjawab permasalahan nyata yang terjadi pada mahasiswa dan pelajar yang kurang beruntung dalam hal ekonomi maupun teknologi yang berada di daerah-daerah terpencil,” lanjutnya.

Kondisi pandemi Covid-19 juga memaksa para pemangku kebijakan di bidang pendidikan untuk dapat menyesuaikan diri dalam melaksanakan proses pembelajaran. Penyesuaian ini diwujudkan melalui kebijakan Merdeka Belajar-Kampus Merdeka (MB-KM), dimana mahasiswa diberikan kesempatan untuk mendapatkan pengalaman belajar yang lebih luas dan kompetensi baru melalui beberapa kegiatan pembelajaran di luar program studinya.

Adapun program-program pada masa pandemi yang dilakukan oleh Direktorat Jenderal Pendidikan Tinggi berupa relawan pengendalian Covid-19 (RECON), KKN Tematik, Mengajar Dari rumah (MDR), dan Permata Sakti. Seluruh program tersebut diikuti oleh ratusan ribu mahasiswa di seluruh Indonesia.

Di sisi lain, Nizam pun menyampaikan masa pandemi ini juga memberikan kesempatan bagi Indonesia untuk keluar dari pandemi dan menjadi green nation. Menurutnya, sejak pandemi hadir, lingkungan menjadi lebih bersih akibat berkurangnya emisi gas buang, mengingat terbatasnya aktivitas masyarakat di luar rumah.
(YH/DZI/FH/DH/NH/MFS/VAL/YJ/ITR)

Humas Ditjen Dikti
Kementerian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan