Qualified wages for the employee retention credit. The tax credit is equal to 50% of qualified wages paid to employees between March 13, 2020, and December 31, 2020. Qualified wages, including qualified health plan expenses, are limited to a maximum of $10,000 for each employee for the cumulative total of all calendar quarters. Qualified wages are wages for social security and Medicare tax purposes paid to certain employees during any period in a quarter in which your operations are fully or partially suspended due to a government order or during a quarter in which you have had a significant decline in gross receipts. The law provides that the significant decline in gross receipts is the period beginning with any quarter in which your gross receipts are less than 50% of what they were in the same calendar quarter in 2019 and ending with the quarter that follows the first quarter beginning after the quarter in which your gross receipts were greater than 80% of what they were in the same calendar quarter in 2019.