In plain terms: The COVID Project is a free public reference on one question. What did the governmental orders of 2020 and 2021 require of businesses in the United States, and what does that mean under the Employee Retention Credit's governmental-orders test? It is built for the small business, the accountant and the lawyer who need the orders themselves, with citations, and the law read as written.
What The COVID Project is
It is the record
The Library is a searchable collection of the governmental orders and related instruments that limited commerce, travel and group meetings in the United States from March 2020 through September 30, 2021: the fifty States and the District of Columbia, forty metropolitan areas, the federal layer, twenty-six clusters of less obvious authorities, the standing duties of every State, the regulators of twenty-seven industries, and the organizers' notices of cancelled trade shows and seasons. Every record carries the issuer, the instrument, the dates, the quarters in force, the operative words verbatim, the source and, where retrieved, the exhibit itself.
It is the authority
The statute, read as written, element by element. Notice 2021-20, held to the United States' own description of it as guidance without the force of law. The cases and the standards of proof. The Government's own words in two federal courts, pinned. The fourteen sentences the Service's letters use, each answered from the public record.
Pick your State, your metro, your industry and the quarters you claimed, and receive the orders that were in force, with citations and exhibit links, as a printable record. Paste the sentences of an IRS letter into the letter decoder and read the answer to each. Scrub through any day of the six quarters on the orders clock and see what was in force where.
What it is not
It is not legal advice. It does not substitute for a lawyer or accountant who knows your facts, and reading it creates no professional relationship. It sells nothing. It publishes only verified public instruments: every record shown is graded "Primary source read" or "Confirmed from a secondary source," and an instrument the record could not verify is never named here. It contains no confidential taxpayer information and takes no position on any particular employer's claim. It is not affiliated with any government agency and is not a party to any litigation it describes.
How to cite this site
Cite a page by its title, its address and the date you read it: The COVID Project, "The Third Quarter of 2021," covidproject.com/quarters/2021Q3 (visited Oct. 1, 2026). Cite an instrument by its exhibit identifier, its official name and date, and its Library address: The COVID Project, Orders Library, Ex. TX-004, Texas Executive Order GA-09 (Mar. 22, 2020), covidproject.com/library/TX-004. The cite tool builds the citation for any record or page.
Corrections
Report an error through the contact page, naming the exhibit identifier; every report is checked against the instrument's own text before the record changes.