Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle want to restore a pandemic-era tax break for small businesses and nonprofits as part of a massive spending bill taking shape, after Congress stripped the benefit away for the final months of 2021.

But with the fast-moving fiscal 2022 omnibus package likely to pass as soon as next week, putting the repealed employee retention tax credit back in place seems like an elusive goal, at least for now.

“The congressional leadership is looking at including bipartisan tax provisions in the omnibus bill,” Dean Zerbe, a former Republican Senate Finance panel aide, said in an email. “However, at the moment, reinstating the fourth quarter of the employee retention credit is on the outside looking in.”

A pandemic relief measure with sustained bipartisan backing, the employee retention tax credit was originally set to expire at the end of 2021.

But senators hunting for revenue to offset the bipartisan infrastructure law last summer included an early repeal of the tax break, cutting it off for 2021’s final quarter. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimated an $8.2 billion revenue gain for the U.S. Treasury, at the expense of companies and charitable organizations expecting relief.

The tax break, which defrayed the cost of keeping workers on payroll, required employers to show they’d faced hardship due to pandemic restrictions or declines in business. It was distributed as a refundable credit against payroll tax, meaning nonprofits and businesses could...

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