To be eligible for the applicable tax credit, an employer must provide a new bank of Emergency Paid Sick Leave (EPSL) of up to 10 days for employees’ use beginning on April 1, 2021 and ending on Sept. 30, 2021. Further, employers may voluntarily continue to provide employees with any remaining EPSL they would have been entitled to under the FFCRA and the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021.
The new measure does not create a new bank of Emergency Family and Medical Leave Expansion Act (EFMLEA) leave, which remains capped at 12 weeks. However, it does provide that the first two weeks of EFMLEA can be paid and employers may seek the corresponding tax credit for those two weeks (previously, the first two weeks were unpaid, but an employee could use available EPSL for those weeks), and it increases the maximum amount of FFCRA tax credits for EFMLEA from $10,000 to $12,000 in the aggregate for each employee.
