COVID stimulus certainly did go to people and businesses that didn't need it. Or didn't need as much of it as they got.
However, PPP didn't adequately cover some of the businesses that needed it the most.
Consider somebody who is bootstrapping a small business because they were packaged-out of their corporate job a year or two before the pandemic began. They couldn't afford to draw anything close to what they need to live on in the year prior to the pandemic. So the PPP payment formula didn't approximate their true needs.
People in that situation had no choice but to try for EIDL. But EIDL required income reported on a Schedule C or an 1120 / 1120S, and if you didn't have that because you were still finding the customers that could sustain the business, then in all likelihood your business either died an early death or came out of the deepest part of the crisis in much worse shape than when it began.
However, PPP didn't adequately cover some of the businesses that needed it the most.
Consider somebody who is bootstrapping a small business because they were packaged-out of their corporate job a year or two before the pandemic began. They couldn't afford to draw anything close to what they need to live on in the year prior to the pandemic. So the PPP payment formula didn't approximate their true needs.
People in that situation had no choice but to try for EIDL. But EIDL required income reported on a Schedule C or an 1120 / 1120S, and if you didn't have that because you were still finding the customers that could sustain the business, then in all likelihood your business either died an early death or came out of the deepest part of the crisis in much worse shape than when it began.