To recap…

Back in 2021 we finally received some federal grant money to keep us alive and cover the enormous costs of having been completely closed for 18 months starting in early 2020… This was the COVID-19 Shuttered Venue Operations Grant (SVOG) which I think is the Payroll Protection Program (PPP) wearing a trenchcoat. The money was incredibly helpful! And it was incredibly difficult to get. The amount of paperwork needed to apply for and receive the grant was insane. We just about had to allocate someone to babysitting that paperwork full-time for six months. The effort and complexity was far beyond the reach of most small businesses, which is why most of the money for these grants went to billion-dollar corporate grifters instead of to the people it was supposed to help, notable examples being Ruth’s Chris Steak House, Veritas (SF’s biggest landlord), Shake Shack, Nestea, and RealNetworks, Lil Wayne, Chris Brown, Marshmello, Steve Aoki and Alice in Chains. And of course multinational superpredator LiveNation who managed to steal millions in Federal aid meant for independent venues.

Anyway, it took more than a year from when we applied to when we got our first check. A year with zero customers. And then in late 2024 – nearly four years later – they did some kind of rule-changing rug-pull on us. They were “reviewing our file” and demanded that we submit an “audit report consistent with 2 CFR 200 Subpart F”.

Just more dumb bureaucracy, right? Well.

Hiring someone to do that audit report correctly cost us $20,000. TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS. And had we not done it, they would have demanded we pay back all of the money we got in 2021.

In 2021, they literally told us, “You have to spend all this money. If you don’t spend it all within a year, on these things, then you can’t keep it.” So we didn’t even have the option to sit on twenty grand to pay for the eventual audit, even if they had told us that was going to happen, which they did not.

Couldn’t they have just given us $20k less and paid for the audit with that? No, apparently not.

Anyway, the auditors decided that we had done something slightly wrong. Let’s say we had expenses A through Z, and we said, “We are using the grant to pay for A, B and C.” The auditors said, “Oh, you can’t spend it on C. But you are allowed to spend it on D through F, so all you have to do is file an amendment, and it all comes out the same.”

So we do that… and… crickets.

See, in between when this audit crap started, and the auditors finished, DOGE had dismantled the Small Business Administration, and they just… stopped answering their phones, or email. Even the auditors could not get hold of anybody and that’s their entire business.

So between October 2024 and March 2026 we were unable to get anyone at SBA to respond to our request to amend the grant! They didn’t say “no” (if they said “no” they would have demanded that we pay back hundreds of thousands of dollars) but rather than saying “yes” they just kept sending us monthly automated emails from a “noreply” address noting that “your Audit Report is still outstanding” and that “Your timely response is anticipated and appreciated in order to resolve any compliance issues.”

For two years.

And then today – the rains have come and the crops are saved!

The Small Business Administration’s Shuttered Venue Operators Grant Program (SVOG) has completed its review of your audit submission package. SBA has determined that your organization has fully and materially complied with Federal grant audit requirements for fiscal year 2022.

Our accountant and the auditors wasted so many (billable) hours just trying to get someone on the phone to respond in any way, so the total wasn’t just the $20,000 we had to pay the audit firm. It also included all the work our accountant did. Fortunately accountants are boss-level note-takers:

43 emails with SBA;286 emails with the audit firm;4+ multi-hour zoom calls with the audit firm;Calling SBA every Wednesday to inquire on the status of our amendments, for at least a year – 50+ calls lasting at least 30 minutes and getting nowhere, so that’s 25 hours right there.

So besides the audiors themselves, babysitting this also cost us somewhere north of 250 hours of labor from our own accountant.

For nothing.

Nothing.

To get us right back to zero.

It’s impressive how Apartheid Emerald Mine Space Karen and Cheeto Mussolini have made our government so much more “efficient”.

This is where I mention that if you would like to help out with the DNA Lounge Accountancy Defense Fund, you can make a one-time donation or join our Patreon, which by the way is a really good deal.

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