CEBA is short for the Canada Emergency Bank Account or is better known as the interest free $40,000 bank loan provided by Ottawa for small businesses due to the Covid lockdown. 

CEBA Funds To Help Small Businesses During Covid-19

CEBA was one of many measures Ottawa provided early on during the Covid lockdown to help Canadian small businesses with operating expenses survive the lockdown.  At the early stage of introduction, a small business needed to have payroll expenses of $40,000 for 2019 fiscal year.  This was later reduced to $ 20,000.  Since then, due to further fine tuning, small businesses with no payroll but $ 40,000 to $1.5 million in operating expenses will now qualify for the CEBA. 

The Canada.ca website goes on to explain expenses such as rent, property taxes, utilities, etc. are considered operating expenses.  Even “regularly scheduled debt service” is included as allowable on the website as of today.

Who Can Qualify for the CEBA?

Another way to look at this is most businesses will qualify for the CEBA now unless the business is a home office business employing solely the proprietor.   

If a small business did not qualify for the CEBA before, it is worthwhile rereading the link below as there has been considerable fine tuning the last few weeks.

For more information on CEBA and if your business qualifies, please go to https://ceba-cuec.ca/

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