SBA OHA confirms 3-year look-back period for economic dependence affiliation

Under the SBA’s regulations, affiliation between two companies might exist where one company derives 70% or more of its receipts from the other over the preceding three fiscal years. See 13 C.F.R. § 121.103(f)(2).

This economic dependence affiliation, as it is called, can be tricky to identify in practice—it is, after all, a rebuttable presumption of affiliation. That is, a company might be able to demonstrate that economic dependence doesn’t exist if, for example, it has only been in business for a limited amount of time and has only been awarded a limited number of contracts.

Recently, the SBA’s Office of Hearings and Appeals considered the bounds of the economic dependence affiliation rule and interpreted the three-year look-back period.

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