The form is an official document for USA citizens which you should file if you claim a general business credit.
According to the USA laws, you are required to fill in your personal data in form 3800. It is obligatory to provide some personal details and information concerning money and paying taxes to make sure that the person who files the form obeys the laws. This procedure allows the government to collect needed data and calculate the tax amount correctly.
Generally, all filers who took credit from S corporation, estate, a partnership, cooperative, or trust should only fill out form 3800. However, this form may be considered as a part of reporting credit information. For instance, S corporations and partnerships must use another form as well since their source of money is not listed in form 3800. There are some other exceptions. It usually may happen that to file from 3800, and you should first file another one. We cannot provide details and requirements about all additional forms that may come in one package of documents. Therefore you should first look for general instructions on your special case and check the list of forms that you have to complete at the same time. Cases of filing forms 3800 and 1041 or 1120 together are the most popular, so you may want to come through instructions for those documents.
In this section, we inform you about the latest innovations in the form. Each year some new lines can be added, rules for filling out concrete points may be deleted or added, or new credit limitations might be introduced. Therefore we highly recommend you to check this list every year, even if you have already completed form 3800 in previous years. There are three innovations that you must know about:
- Firstly, a new credit that can be used by minor employers to enroll their savings concerning retirement automatically has been introduced;
- Secondly, for the same social group, there is now also a rise in the limit set on the costs for pension plan startup;
- Finally, concerning formation requirements, you should know that checkbox lines four and 34 (see the first and the second sections) have been added by the government to the document. Those lines help taxpayers whose carryforward amounts now differ from the original one.
Keep in mind that the new rules only apply after the 2019 tax year. All forms that were filled out before that date are not subject to these changes.
Updates Concerning Coronavirus
You should be aware that apart from all the credits that were already included in the general business, one covid-related tax credit was introduced to provide additional support. The credits will be beneficial for small companies with less than 500 employees. Entrepreneurs now have an opportunity to apply for credits to provide sick leave and family leave for their workers. The program has been introduced recently and is still available until March 31, 2021.
The form consists of three parts. Here you will find a comprehensive list of requirements and instructions for each section that you can follow step-by-step. To fill out the form without any mistakes, we suggest not going from the first section to the last as they are placed in the form. It might be important to complete the third part first.
Complete the first part
Here you will need to fill in the information concerning credits of the current year for credits that were not allowed against TMT.
- When filling in the third line, remember that you only should enter credits that are allowed in this part. Enter the whole sum of credits for business purposes which were not possible to write in the previous line because of TMT. You should also write a credit of the same kind taken previous years;
- To fill in the information in the fourth line, you should check the box on the right and provide a required statement. It should contain information about the original year of the credit as well as the original amount and the amount which was allowed that year. Write down if you changed the amount and specify which credits did you involve;
- You should complete the fifth line only if you have corrected the amount of your return from 2020. That might be done to carry back credits which are not used from 2021. In this case, you should check box D and enter the amount that is reported from line 2 (section 3).
Now move on to the second part about allowable credits
- In the line 10b, rewrite the allowable credit from the tax return;
- For C corporations, some problems may occur while filling in the seventeenth line. If one of the following situations that make the process of reporting credits and taxes more complicated has ever taken place, you must provide another document to prove it. These cases include an ownership change, or a corporation acquired control of another one. Please attach a computation of the allowable general business credit and fill in the amount. Also, you should not forget to mention sec. 383 or 384 on this line;
- You should not fill in the lines from 18 to 25, and you must only write zero on line 26. This rule is not applicable for a few exceptions;
- On line 24, you should enter the passive activity credit amount. You can only write about the empowerment zone and renewal community employment credit. Other types of money sources must not be mentioned here;
- You should write only allowed passive activity credit on line 33. Those are the general business credits (see the previous line), eligible small business credit, and an unallowed credit from previous years;
- On line 34, you must write down the number of carryforwards to 2020 of unused credits. Check the box and attach required documents to calculate the charge or revision;
- If you amend the return from 2020 to carry back unused credits from 2021, you should fill in line 35. Compare the needed sum with the fifth line and make sure that the D box is marked;
- For line 38, you should see carryback and carryforward of unused credit when the amount on this line is smaller than the total amount of lines 6, 25, and 36 calculated together.
Fill in the information on general business credits or eligible small business credits
Remember that you have to fill in this part separately for each credit source (each box that you checked) and even for each pass-through entity in certain cases.
- Start from checking the box that reports a type of credit;
- Notice that boxes from A to D and also G are marked by white compared to other boxes that are grey-colored. We will focus on these boxes;
- Do not forget to check box I just below boxes from A to H if If you are filing more than one Part III with box A or B checked;
- You should write down your pass-through entity’s employer identification number (EIN) below column (b) when you are reporting credit from a pass-through entity or your cooperative’s EIN for the credit reporter on form 1099-PATR;
- Be aware of some limitations on credits such as: for the overall credit and for qualified small wind energy property;
- Complete all lines in the third part following instructions given in the form;
- Completing form 3800 is compulsory for small companies owners before the section D in form 6765A in the case of reporting the payroll tax credit;
- Appropriate minor companies’ research credits should be reported on line 4i. Others should enter their sources and sums on line 1c;
- The rules are different for separate taxpayers. The maximum number of credits must be taken into consideration. Calculate the limitations and remember that the resulting number must not exceed one;
- Mind some prohibitions. For instance, it is prohibited to report more than 5,000 dollars in line 1e, column (c);
- When completing this document, you should also be aware of some restrictions like the carryforward must be written on the particular line in this section depending on the type;
- Those individuals who only took credit from pass-through entities should fill in line 4h. The majority of minor employers should report the credit on lines 16 or 18 (check form 8941);
- Remember that line 4z will only be needed in the future. You should not write there now.
