On March 25, 2021, the SBA announced they were increasing the EIDL loan limits dramatically, from a $150,000 to $500,000 for small businesses. This was huge news for millions of small business owners, a decision made by new SBA Administrator Isabel Guzman.
On April 22, 2021, we covered the SBA's new instructions on how to request an EIDL loan increase. This included instructions from the SBA on logging in to your SBA portal and clicking the "Request More Funds" button.
As of this writing on June 18, 2021 — nearly 3 months later — the majority of businesses who have requested EIDL loan increases (millions) have not received an increase. According to our survey from 2 weeks ago with over 5K respondents, over 90% of people are still waiting for their EIDL loan increases.
The SBA has subsequently said that they are trying to increase the approvals pace, that they've hired loan officers, but in many cases they're waiting for IRS to send over information.
While the SBA is working hard, we believe they should do their best to continue to hire more Loan Officers to increase the speed of loan review and streamline the process with the IRS to verify tax returns. In most cases, the SBA should already have all of the tax return information they need from the first EIDL loan or EIDL grant approvals.
Sign the petition below to have your name included in our letter to SBA Administrator Isabel Guzman to encourage them to speed up the EIDL loan increase process substantially by the end of June. We don't need to be prescriptive: more loan officers, streamlined process for review and streamlined process for IRS returns, will certainly help millions of you desperately waiting for more working capital for support your businesses — backbones of the US economy — and to support your livelihoods.