Thank you so much Stephen!

I Think you’re going to be fine. I.e., you furloughed yourself in Q1 due to Covid… and in Q2 or Q3, you’ll “rehire” yourself and get the payroll costs you need.

I am an owner employee of an s-corp and the only employee. I applied for a ppp loan based on my year end 2019 w-2 wages paid supported by my 941 filings for 2019. I learned of loan approval after 4/30/2020 and I received the loan on 5/11/2020. When filing my 1st quarter 941 for 2020, since I had not made any money this year, I opted to not pay myself any wages for this quarter but I still filed the 941 and put that I had 1 employee with zero wages paid. I am now wondering if this will make my ppp loan forgiveness ineligible as this 941 document may indicate to the SBA that I was not in business on 2/15/2020? I am planning on paying myself a monthly wage based on my 2019 salary until I have paid the full amount of the loan as payroll and then submit the request for loan forgiveness. By the way, I usually pay myself a small quarterly wage for Q1-Q3 to fund my federal and state tax withholdings throughout the year and then pay a much larger wage/salary in Q4 depending on my earnings for the year.

So to recap, in your opinion by filing my 1st Quarter 2020 941 with 1 employee paid zero wages, have I made my loan forgiveness ineligible and if so, is there anything I can do to remedy the situation (e.g., file a 941x or would that cause more of a red flag, burden and penalties/interest than would be worthwhile)?

Is the EIDL Advance of $1000 per employee (up to a maximum of 10) a Grant, and taxable as income?

Or is it a no questions asked forgiven loan and like the PPP also not subject to income tax but the expenses paid with it are non-deductible ?

Or is the Advance simply free money ?

How is the Advance considered in the case of receiving the EID Loan, part of, not part of, etc. ?

What is known about EIDL (loan) enforcement ?
How worried should a borrower be that the SBA, or their appointing collection agencies, in tracing the use of funds ?

What are typical and allowable use of funds ?

Can the funds be used to restructure recent (since disaster) debt or can the ‘working capital’ use of proceeds allow for restructuring older more costly debt to help in the sustaining of the business ?