The majority of people who file taxes wind up with a refund each year. But what if you're in that smaller percentage of filers who owe the IRS money? Under normal circumstances, that's a stressful situation to contend with. During the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, it could spell disaster, especially if you happen to be out of work, which is the case for millions of Americans who have lost their jobs in the past few weeks.
If you're looking at a tax bill right now, here are a few things you can do to make the situation easier on yourself.
Normally, you only have until April 15 to file your previous year's tax return and pay the IRS any money it indicates that you owe. This year, however, because of COVID-19, the deadline to both file a tax return and pay a tax bill for 2019 has been pushed back three months to July 15, 2020. As such, if you've recently completed your 2019 return and see that you owe money, you can submit that return but hold off on paying the taxes associated with it for another three months (you're not required to make a payment the day you turn in your taxes). That way, you'll potentially have more time to scrounge up some cash.
IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES.
Even when we're not in the middle of a crisis, the IRS will usually work with people who don't have the means of paying their tax debt on time. If that's the situation you're in, reach out to the IRS and ask to get on an installment agreement. You can think of it as a payment plan, where instead of writing out a huge check, you pay your balance over time. And the best part? If you think you'll be able to pay off your balance within 120 days of when it's due (for this year, that means within 120 days of July 15), you won't pay a fee to set up that arrangement. Otherwise, you'll pay a modest fee for setting up a direct debit with the IRS, which may be reduced if you're a low enough earner.
With an offer in compromise, you offer to settle your tax debt with the IRS for less than the amount you owe. This option is not unique to the COVID-19 crisis; it's been around for years. But it's also extremely difficult to qualify for. In a nutshell, for the IRS to accept an offer in compromise, you need to prove that paying your tax debt in full will constitute an undue financial hardship, or that you truly don't have the means to pay it. And also, your offer will need to be reasonable. If you owe the IRS $8,000, it probably won't accept $1,000 of it and call it a day. But if you offer to pay half, the IRS may agree under the right circumstances.
Keep in mind that a layoff resulting from COVID-19 may not be a valid reason to not pay your tax bill in full. Though unemployment is rampant right now, many people in that boat are without a paycheck temporarily, so be careful when trying to point to the crisis as a reason to wipe out some of your debt.
Owing taxes in the middle of a pandemic is less than ideal. If that's the boat you're in, don't panic. Rather, explore your options and see what makes the most sense given your circumstances.
A new COVID-19 vaccine candidate is entering Phase 1 clinical human testing today, after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) accepted an application from Inovio Pharmaceuticals under the regulators Investigational New Drug program. Inovio plans to inject its first volunteer test subject with the INO-4800 DNA vaccine candidate it has developed, following promising results from preclinical studies performed on animals that did indicate increased immune response.
The Inovio DNA vaccine candidate works by injecting a specifically engineered plasmid (a small, independent genetic structure) into a patient so that their cells can produce a desired, targeted antibody to fight off a specific infection. DNA vaccines, while available and approved for a variety of animal infections in veterinary medicine, have not yet been approved for human use.
That said, Inovios work isnt starting from scratch: The company previously completed a Phase 1 study for a DNA vaccine candidate for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), where it showed promising results and a high level of antibodies produced in subjects that persisted for an extended period of time.
Inovio has been able to scale up quickly, developing and producing thousands of doses of INO-4800 in just a few short weeks in order to support its Phase 1 and Phase 2 trials. The company has done so in part thanks to backing from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as funding from other non-profits and organizations. If clinical trials are succeeding, Inovio says that it will be able to have up to one million doses of the vaccine ready by end of year, for use both in additional trials and for potential emergency use pending authorization.
This is the second vaccine to undertake Phase 1 clinical testing on human subjects: Moderna began its trial in mid-March. Inovios trial will be made up of 40 volunteers, all health adults selected via screening conducted at either Philadelphias Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Center for Pharmaceutical Research in Kansas City. Itll span the next several weeks, and the company expects data around the immune responses from test subjects as well as info pertaining to the safety of the treatment for humans, to be available by late this summer.
Any broad clearance or approval for use is still likely at least a year to 18 months away, but the pace with which human trials are beginning is already still exceptional, so hopefully we wont have to wait too much longer than that.
Fighting a pandemic involves many moving parts. That much has become clear to many of us in ways we've never before experienced or understood, as the lives of almost every American has slowed to a standstill. As much as 90 percent of the country is under some form of stay-at-homeorder requiring millions of people to suddenly figure out how to work from home.
Of all of those parts, one of the most important is the development of a vaccine that can prevent the continued spread of the virus.Bill Gates has some experience in this area, with his foundation already working on infectious disease research and funding vaccines. I wrote last year about how the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's work had all but eradicated polio from Nigeria, one of its last remaining holdouts.
In addition to that experience, Gates also happens to have another important resource necessary to help stop a pandemic--the cash tomake it happen. And Gates has already been working to slow the coronavirus outbreak, putting money towards testing kits that can increase the capacity for determining who might be infected.
And on Friday, Gates told Trevor Noah, the host of The Daily Show, that the foundation is funding the construction of factories for the seven most promising vaccine candidates, even though they know only one will end up getting picked.
There is something incredible aboutunderstanding that most of those efforts will fail. Most of the vaccines that the foundation will build facilities to produce won't ever make it that far. Those facilities will require millions--if not billions--to build, though most will never be used for those purposes.
In Gates's words, it'll cost money but save time. Right now, time is against us.
Before anyone talks about how that money could be put to better use, consider that the amount of money the Gates Foundation is spending is far less than the cost of delaying a vaccine further into next year. Gates even pointed out that a few billion now can prevent a few trillion in economic disaster later due to a prolonged outbreak. That's a roughly 1,000 times return on the investment. I'm not a math guy, but even I know that's worth it.
It's also probably worth mentioning here that this is exactly the same mentality that would benefit every business right now. Everything is up in the air. No one knows how long this will last. Millions of people have lost their jobs and hundreds of thousands of small businesses have closed their doors.
Right now, what we all need are people willing to invest in what will make the biggest difference. That doesn't just mean billionaires with their own private foundations, by the way. It also means every entrepreneur and small-business owner. The challenge is to invest now in what will make the biggest difference for your business, your team, your customers, and yourcommunity.
A bunch of theideas will fail,but that's how we get to the ones that will--quite literally--change the world.Thatkind of thinkingalways has a positive return.
Published on: Apr 6, 2020
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
Opening up yet another front in the war against COVID-19, the disease caused by the fast-spreadingSARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE:GSK) announced it is contributing to another vaccine research effort.
The UK-based pharmaceutical giant wrote, in an update on its work combating the coronavirus and the disease, that it is collaborating with Xiamen Innovax Biotech. The China-based company is attempting to develop a COVID-19 vaccine.
Image source: Getty Images.
That candidate, known as COVID-19 XWG-03, is being developed by Innovax in conjunction with researchers from Xiamen University. GlaxoSmithKline says its role in the project will be to provide access to an adjuvant for use in the vaccine. Adjuvants, a specialty of GlaxoSmithKline, are additives used in certain vaccines to boost the body's immune response to the relevant threat.
This is not the first collaboration between the two companies. In 2019 they teamed up to develop a vaccine for human papillomavirus (HPV), a virus that can cause cancer. This work was to feed into GlaxoSmithKline's efforts to devise a successor to its HPV treatment, Cervarix.
Although GlaxoSmithKline is one of the top vaccine makers among the world's pharmaceutical companies, it has elected to take a largely secondary role in the development of COVID-19 vaccines. Innovax is only its most recently announced partner in these efforts -- it is also providing adjuvant technology for several other research organizations and companies; among the latter is China-basedClover Biopharmaceuticals.
On Friday, GlaxoSmithKline's share price dipped by 1.5%, more or less in line with the broader stock market indexes on that day.
The unprecedented response to the COVID-19 pandemic has prioritized keeping people apart to slow the spread of the virus. While measures such as business closures and travel restrictions are effective at fighting a pandemic, they also have a dramatic impact on the economy.
To help right the ship, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act also known as the CARES Act was passed by U.S. lawmakers last week with little fanfare. The act became the largest economic stimulus bill in modern history, more than doubling the stimulus act passed in 2009 during the Financial Crisis.
Todays Sankey diagram is a visual representation of where the $2 trillion will be spent. Broadly speaking, there are five components to the COVID-19 stimulus bill:
Although the COVID-19 stimulus bill is incredibly complex, here are some of the most important parts to be aware of.
Amount: $603.7 billion 30% of total CARES Act
In order to stimulate the sputtering economy quickly, the U.S. government will deploy helicopter money direct cash payments to individuals and families.
The centerpiece of this plan is a $1,200 direct payment for those earning up to $75,000 per year. For higher earners, payment amounts will phase out, ending altogether at the $99,000 income level. Families will also receive $500 per child.
There are three other key things to know about this portion of the stimulus funds:
Amount: $500.0 billion 25% of total CARES Act
This component of the package is aimed at stabilizing big businesses in hard-hit sectors.
The most obvious industry to receive support will be the airlines. About $58 billion has been earmarked for commercial and cargo airlines, as well as airline contractors. Perhaps in response to recent criticism of the industry, companies receiving stimulus money will be barred from engaging in stock buybacks for the term of the loan plus one year.
One interesting pathway highlighted by todays Sankey diagram is the $17 billion allocated to maintaining national security. While this provision doesnt mention any specific company by name, the primary recipient is believed to be Boeing.
The bill also indicates that an inspector general will oversee the recovery process, along with a special committee.
Amount: $377.0 billion 19% of total CARES Act
To ease the strain on businesses around the country, the Small Business Administration (SBA) will be given $350 billion to provide loans of up to $10 million to qualifying organizations. These funds can be used for mission critical activities, such as paying rent or keeping employees on the payroll during COVID-19 closures.
As well, the bill sets aside $10 billion in grants for small businesses that need help covering short-term operating costs.
Amount: $340.0 billion 17% of total CARES Act
The biggest portion of funds going to local and state governments is the $274 billion allocated towards direct COVID-19 response. The rest of the funds in this component will go to schools and child care services.
Amount: $179.5 billion 9% of total CARES Act
The biggest slice of this pie goes to healthcare providers, who will receive $100 billion in grants to help fight COVID-19. This was a major ask from groups representing the healthcare industry, as they look to make up the lost revenue caused by focusing on the outbreak as opposed to performing elective surgeries and other procedures. There will also be a 20% increase in Medicare payments for treating patients with the virus.
Money is also set aside for initiatives such as increasing the availability of ventilators and masks for the Strategic National Stockpile, as well as providing additional funding for the Center for Disease Control and expanding the reach of virtual doctors.
Finally, beyond the healthcare-related funding, the CARES Act also addresses food security programs and a long list of educational and arts initiatives.
Hat tip to Reddit user SevenandForty for inspiring this graphic.
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Researchers work around the clock developing COVID-19 vaccine at Mayo Clinic ActionNewsJax.com
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I ask my outside law firms the obvious question: Will we win at trial?
I always hear the same responses: We havent yet finished discovery. We dont know. Or: Juries are always unpredictable. Or: Ill get back to you five minutes after the jury renders a verdict.
Its exactly the way one should hedge ones bets, but its not what the questioner is looking for.
So, too, with COVID-19. Will hydroxychloroquine treat this problem? We havent yet finished the clinical trials. And, like Sergeant Schultz, we know nothing until five minutes after we see the results of the clinical trials.
Thats crap. You know something. Youre just hedging your bets, and youre afraid to speak.
So I asked a couple of physicians to go out on a limb for me anonymously, of course and tell me whats really going to happen, even though we of course dont know anything until the results come in. Heres what I heard.
COVID-19 causes serious trouble breathing physicians call it acute respiratory distress syndrome, but Im leaving the fancy words to people with medical degrees. Serious trouble breathing has been causing people to be admitted into intensive care units ever since they invented intensive care units. As you would expect, because this has been a problem for decades, physicians have been studying it for decades. But they havent yet found a cure. Theres no decent medication for the problem. Many, many drugs dont work. In the words of one recent study: We found insufficient evidence to determine with certainty whether corticosteroids, surfactants, Nacetylcysteine, statins, or betaagonists were effective at reducing mortality in people with acute respiratory distress syndrome. I dont even know what all those words mean, but you can tell it aint good.
Theres some evidence that if you turn up the ventilator a little higher, that helps patients. But, for the most part, physicians have spent decades trying to cure acute respiratory distress, and no one has come up with anything that works.
President Donald Trump says that hydroxychloroquine might work. President Trump tells us that hes a smart guy, and he feels good about hydroxychloroquine. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, then says that hed be more cautious; hed wait for the results of the clinical trials to come in.
Translation: This is way too optimistic. I have to correct the president in a way that wont get me fired. Weve been working on the problem of breathing difficulties for decades, and no one has yet solved it. What are the odds that a drug that has been on the market for 50 years and is not aimed specifically at this virus is going to be the cure for COVID-19? Its conceivable, of course, but the odds are overwhelmingly against it.
Not only that: About half of the patients with COVID-19 who are put on ventilators die. Suppose a drug works. Perhaps it reduces the mortality rate from 50 percent to 40 percent of those put on ventilators, which would be a great treatment. Even with a 40 percent mortality rate, we still have a heck of a problem on our hands. Scientists hit singles and doubles more often than they hit home runs; its very unlikely that were going to unearth a miracle.
How about the other ideas for treating COVID-19? Theyre interesting, but theyre all crapshoots. Dont count on em.
How about a vaccine? Thats far more likely. As Fauci said, proving that a vaccine is safe and effective will take a year to 18 months. A year to 18 months is a long time to wait.
After the vaccine is developed, it will not be 100 percent effective. Perhaps it will be 70 or 80 percent effective.
So how will this all play out?
COVID-19 will not disappear. It exists, and it will exist for a long, long time.
But COVID-19 appears to be seasonal. The virus appears to spread far less in warm weather.
Thus: We now have flu season every year. Flu season arrives in the winter. Some people choose to get a vaccine, which is not 100 percent effective. Some people choose not to get a vaccine. Every year, the flu kills tens of thousands of people.
Starting two years from now, we will have COVID-19 season every year. It will arrive in the winter. Some people will choose to get a vaccine, which will not be 100 percent effective. Some people will choose not to get a vaccine. If enough people take the vaccine to create herd immunity, then relatively few people will die from COVID-19. Otherwise, every year, COVID-19 will kill tens of thousands of people.
And well live with it, just as we live with the flu, and people dying in car accidents and plane crashes, and the many other deaths that regularly occur in the background noise of society.
But dont expect a miracle cure in the next month or two.
The jury wont come back by then.
MarkHerrmannspent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and is now deputy general counsel at a large international company. He is the author ofThe Curmudgeons Guide to Practicing LawandDrug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy(affiliate links). You can reach him by email atinhouse@abovethelaw.com.
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A supermarket cashier in Buenos Aires, Argentina,waits for costumers behind a makeshift plastic curtain as a precaution against the spread of thecoronavirus that causes COVID-19.
By Robert F. ServiceApr. 2, 2020 , 6:45 PM
Sciences COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center.
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has given a boost to an unsettling idea: that the novel coronavirus can spread through the airnot just via the large droplets emitted in a cough or sneeze. Though current studies arent conclusive, the results of available studies are consistent with aerosolization of virus from normal breathing, Harvey Fineberg, who heads a standing committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats, wrotein a 1 April letterto Kelvin Droegemeier, head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Thus far, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health agencies have insisted the primary route of transmission for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is through the larger respiratory droplets, up to 1 millimeter across, that people expel when they cough and sneeze. Gravity grounds these droplets within 1 or 2 meters, although they deposit thevirus on surfaces, from which people can pick it up and infect themselves by touching their mouth, nose, or eyes. But if the coronavirus can be suspended in the ultrafine mist that we produce when we exhale, protection becomes more difficult, strengthening the argument that all people should wear masks in public to reduce unwitting transmission of the virus from asymptomatic carriers.
The debate began when researchers reported earlier this year in The New England Journal of Medicine that SARS-CoV-2 can float in aerosol dropletsbelow 5 microns acrossfor up to 3 hours, and remain infectious. In their review, Fineberg and his NAS colleagues pointed to other studies, including a recent one by Joshua Santarpia and colleagues at the University of Nebraska Medical Center that found widespread evidence of viral RNA in isolation rooms of patients being treated for COVID-19. Viral RNA turned up on hard to reach surfaces, as well as in air samplers more than 2 meters from the patients. The presence of the RNA indicates virus can spread via aerosols, Santarpia and his colleagues concluded, although they did not find infectious viral particles.
Another preprint cited by the NAS panel raised concerns that personal protective equipment (PPE) could itself be a source of airborne contamination. In that work, researchers led by Yuan Liu at Wuhan University in China found the novel coronavirus can be resuspended in the air when health care workers remove their PPE, clean the floors, and move through infected areas. Taken together, the presence of viral RNA in air droplets and aerosols indicates the possibility of viral transmissions via these routes, the NAS panel concludes.
[Im] relieved to see aerosolization is accepted, Kimberly Prather, an aerosol chemist at the University of California, San Diego, wrote in an email to ScienceInsider. This added airborne pathway helps explain why it is spreading so fast.
It also adds to the case for masks. The NAS panel cited work reported in a preprint by Nancy Leung of the University of Hong Kong and colleagues. They collected respiratory droplets and aerosols from patients with respiratory illnesses caused by viruses; some of the patients wore surgical facemasks. The masks reduced the detection of coronavirus RNA in both respiratory droplets and aerosols, but only in respiratory droplets among influenza sufferers. Our results provide mechanistic evidence that surgical facemasks could prevent transmission of human coronavirus and influenza virus infections if worn by symptomatic individuals, the researchers conclude.
Not all experts agree that aerosols are a likely route of transmission. A 27 March scientific brief from the World Health Organization (WHO) states that aerosol transmission may be possible in specific circumstances and settings that generate aerosols, such as when severely ill patients are intubated with a breathing tube. However, the WHO experts say, an analysis of more than 75,000 coronavirus cases in China revealed no cases of airborne transmission. As for studies such as Santarpias, they note that the detection of RNA in environmental samples based on PCR-based assays is not indicative of viable virus that could be transmissible.
Nevertheless, CDC is apparently getting ready to change its stance on the subject. According to multiple news reports the agency is poised to recommend that all people in the United States wear cloth facemasks in public to reduce the spread of the virus.
The deans also made a more ambitious request: that the court consider letting graduates working under licensed lawyers seek admission to the bar without sitting for the bar examination.
Three weeks after the virus was first detected in New York Citys jails, including Rikers Island, four in 10 inmates were being held in quarantine as the number of cases continued to rise.
The latest quarantine figures were released late Wednesday by the citys Board of Correction, which monitors the citys jails.
Correction officials said separately that as of Thursday morning, 223 staff members, 231 inmates and 38 health care workers assigned to the jails had tested positive for the virus.
Inmates were now being screened for symptoms before being arraigned, board officials said.
Officials have moved to release about 900 detainees from the jails in the past two weeks to stem the viruss spread. But inmates and correction staff members have said that conditions at the jails were still unsanitary.
Inmates have found inventive ways to protect themselves, using diluted shampoo as a disinfectant and alcohol pads from a jail barber to sanitize phones.
Jail workers have complained about not having access to protective gear like masks and gloves, and about what they said was a failure to notify them when they had come into contact with a someone who had been infected.
Reporting was contributed by Kevin Armstrong, Jonah Engel Bromwich, Maria Cramer, Luis Ferr-Sadurn, Alan Feuer, Michael Gold, Corey Kilgannon, Adam Liptak, Jesse McKinley, Andy Newman, Jan Ransom, Brian M. Rosenthal, Andrea Salcedo, Michael Schwirtz, Eliza Shapiro, Matt Stevens, James Wagner and Michael Wilson.
