Pandemic’s Employee Retention Credits Face Deadline: BGOV Tax

March 9, 2026, 10:06 AM UTC

Litigants’ Pandemic Refund Deadline Nears

A flood of lawsuits may be coming to the IRS for denying pandemic-era tax credits as employers weigh a two-year statute of limitations.

Congress created the refundable employee retention credit in the bipartisan CARES Act (Public Law 116–136) at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic to incentivize business to keep their workers on the payroll even if they shut down for public health reasons.

But widespread fraud prompted the IRS to pause processing for over a year, and now employers with denied tax credit claims are facing long delays in IRS appeals.

The IRS is ...

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