The IRS says it’s making progress with initiatives to claw back money improperly distributed under the Employee Retention Credit.

The ERC was designed to help businesses retain employees during pandemic-era shutdowns, but it quickly became a magnet for fraud. Its complex eligibility rules allowed scammers to target small businesses, offering help applying for the ERC for a fee — even if they didn’t qualify.

The IRS said it received $225 million from a voluntary disclosure program, which ended on March 22, that let small businesses that thought they received the credit in error give back the money and keep 20%. That money came from over 500 taxpayers.

“We remain deeply concerned about widespread abuse involving these claims that have harmed small businesses,” said IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel. “We are encouraged by the results so far of our initiatives designed to help misled businesses.”

Powell still sees rate cuts this year

Federal Reserve officials will likely reduce their benchmark interest rate later this year, Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday, despite recent reports showing that the U.S. economy is still strong and that U.S. inflation picked up in January and February.

“The recent data do not … materially change the overall picture,” Powell said at Stanford University, “which continues to be one of solid growth, a strong but rebalancing labor market, and inflation moving down toward 2% on a sometimes bumpy path.”

Most Fed officials “see it as likely to be appropriate” to start cutting their key rate “at some point this year,” he added.

Rate cuts would begin to reverse the 11 increases the Fed carried out beginning in March 2022 to fight the worst inflation bout in four decades.