The Internal Revenue Service late this week announced a moratorium at least through the end of this year on processing new claims for a pandemic-era relief program so it can protect small business owners from scams.

The employee retention credit, or ERC, was created to support small businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. It can be worth thousands of dollars per employee and has sparked a flood of specialist firms falsely promising businesses they qualify for the complicated tax break.

"The IRS is increasingly alarmed about honest small business owners being scammed by unscrupulous actors, and we could no longer tolerate growing evidence of questionable claims pouring in," IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said. "The further we get from the pandemic, the further we see the good intentions of this important program abused. The continued aggressive marketing of these schemes is harming well-meaning businesses and delaying the payment of legitimate claims, which makes it harder to run the rest of the tax system. This harms all taxpayers, not just ERC applicants."