Covid changed a lot for everyone in the entire world.
I know, that’s a pretty bold way to start an article. How could I possibly cover every aspect of the world that has changed as a result of the covid-19 pandemic?
Well, you would be right to be worried. I cannot do that. That would take years of research. In two decades we’ll still be finding out things the pandemic did. But I do know something already, without dedicating the next two decades of my life to it.
I’ll tell you the thing I know without any more beating around the bush. In the early days, back in 2020, the federal government enacted a law that acted as an economic safety measure to keep businesses up and running. It allowed them a twenty-six-thousand-dollar tax credit for each full-time employee. It was called the ERTC employee retention tax credit and guess what? It never expired. With a qualified professional, you can still take advantage of this advantageous deal.
Now that I’ve got you here, I have a few things I’m concerned about that I’d like to share with you.
Strained Resources
Here’s a thing that I’ve been worried about since the pandemic started. Are we going to continue to have fresh fruit and vegetables available to us? I know I took it to a weird place, but the coin shortage really had me freaking out.
Do you remember that, when you couldn’t pay in cash anywhere unless you had exact change because the coins in this country had disappeared into someone’s pocket? We were just all staying home and buying things online.
One day we got the bright idea to buy craft supplies from the chain store Michael’s. They have a large inventory of pipe cleaners and felt and other things like that. We thought it would help to keep us occupied while we were locked in the house. Click here for more information about supply chain shortages.
We got the email that our order had been received and we got our shoes on and got ready to leave. It wasn’t until we were already on the road that we received a second email. It said, “Don’t leave yet!”
Well, shoot, guys, what if we already have?
So, we drove all the way there thinking that it couldn’t possibly take that long to fill our order. We could even grocery shop if we needed to because there was a Vons right there in the same strip mall. It wasn’t my preferred way to shop back then.
My preferred method was to go to the store, then come home and immediately strip off my contaminated clothes and hop in the shower and wash my hair. My hair was long back there, halfway down my back. It took a while to clean it. In the cold March weather, it also took a while to dry it.
A Long Wait
We were so wrong. For once, everyone else had the same idea that we had.
One year on Halloween, we decided to celebrate by going to the Los Feliz Three movie theater. It was within a ten-minute ride from our house, so we took a lift there and bought tickets for The Old Spooky House.
“We should have left earlier,” I said as we approached the theater. “They’re going to be sold out.” The movie, if you’ve never heard of it, was over a hundred years old. That means that it almost assuredly is in the public domain and could probably be found by a quick YouTube search.
Needless to say, the movie was not sold out. There were maybe ten other people there besides us. Maybe. If I’m being generous. But the people who didn’t go really missed out. It was quite the experience.
It was exactly like the book. Click the link: https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions-for-individuals for more information about tax deductions.
A New Day
But the trip to Michael’s was nothing like that. The girls that were working there – and they were girls, maybe college age, not women – looked harried. They were running around with clipboards and big brown bags and their phones, trying to pull information faster than people were requesting it of them.
