Gov. Chris Sununu has signed into law a bill that exempts forgiven Paycheck Protection Program loans from the Business Profits Tax.

Senate Bill 3 — which the governor called a “win-win” — was made necessary because the state hadn’t updated its tax code to comply with the federal government’s since 2018, meaning that it didn’t acknowledge a recent change in the federal code exempting the PPP loans from taxation. SB 3 brought it up to date.

Meanwhile, the Paycheck Protection Program, which began with such a bang at the beginning of the pandemic, ended with a quiet whimper on June 1, when the U.S. Small Business Administration stopped taking applications altogether.

While the final numbers are not in, the program has thus far pumped nearly $3.72 billion to more than 25,000 New Hampshire businesses, as of Memorial Day.

The SBA is still processing the forgivable loans.

Though the program has given less than $14 billion of $291.5 billion allocated by Congress over the last few months, it’s unclear whether that money will go to businesses, banker’s fees or back to the Treasury.

The number of loans approved slowed in the program’s waning days, but that is at least partly due to the fact that the federal agency stopped taking loans originated by banks at the start of May, reserving the remaining loans for Community Development Financial Institutions, and in New Hampshire no CDFIs participated in the program.

New Hampshire processed 185 loans during that last week, a tenth of the more than 2,100 it reported during the first week after reopening in January. — BOB SANDERS