#compliance
Navigate regulatory compliance and maintain audit-ready financial records
Cash wages are wages — Publication 15 withholding, EFTPS deposits, Form 941 and W-2 reporting all apply in full. The illegal part is the missing paper trail, and it costs back taxes, stacked penalties, and personal liability for 100% of unpaid trust fund taxes under IRC section 6672.
USERRA covers every US employer with no headcount minimum. When an employee is called to military service, you must reemploy them promptly at the "escalator" position they would have reached, continue health coverage for up to 24 months, credit seniority and pension benefits as if they never left, and honor return deadlines of 14 or 90 days depending on service length. This guide lays out the five reemployment conditions, the anti-discrimination rules, what federal law does not require, and a before-during-after bookkeeping checklist for small employers.
Since July 1, 2026, a Washington homeowner holding an unsatisfied court judgment against a registered contractor can collect up to $25,000 per parcel from L&I's Homeowner Recovery Program, and the state then pursues the contractor for reimbursement. This guide covers the eligibility rules, the $30,000 general and $15,000 specialty bond requirements, and the job-costing, change-order, retention and sales-tax bookkeeping habits that keep a dispute from ending in a judgment.
When an employee quits before the employer match vests, the unvested dollars land in the plan's forfeiture account. The IRS's proposed rule would give sponsors 12 months after the plan year closes to use them — on plan expenses, on reducing future employer contributions, or by reallocating to participants — and stale multi-year suspense balances are already a standard audit finding.
Brazil's IBS/CBS dual VAT replaces five consumption taxes, and a Simples Nacional supplier now passes on a smaller input credit than a regular-regime competitor quoting the same price. A guide to the September 30 and November 1, 2026 deadlines, the 2027 end of cash-basis Simples, and what the credit chain changes in B2B pricing and bookkeeping.
Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook filter mail from domains without SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, and bulk senders must also keep spam complaints under 0.3% and offer one-click unsubscribe. Here is what each DNS record proves, how to publish all three in about an hour, the seven mistakes that keep small-business invoices in spam, and why unread invoices show up in your receivables.
Effective January 1, 2026, California SB 517 amends Business and Professions Code Section 7159 to require every home improvement contract to include a yes/no subcontractor checkbox, a statutory disclaimer when the answer is yes, and that same disclaimer on every change order — with the prime contractor still responsible for completing the job.
When clocks fall back at 2:00 a.m. on November 1, 2026, a scheduled eight-hour overnight shift becomes nine paid hours under the FLSA — and that ninth hour counts toward the 40-hour overtime threshold. Spring forward is not the mirror image: the hour never worked may be paid voluntarily but is excluded from the regular rate and cannot offset real overtime.
CMS froze new DMEPOS Medicare enrollment from February 27 to August 27, 2026, barred 11 suppliers tied to $3.4 billion in suspected fraudulent billing, and suspended $5.7 billion in Medicare payments during 2025. Here is what actually changed for legitimate medical supply businesses and the seven billing and bookkeeping controls that keep claims paid and supplier numbers intact.
Employers usually have 10 to 21 days to respond to an unemployment claim notice, and an unanswered claim raises SUTA experience rates for years — a two-point increase on $800,000 of taxable payroll costs about $16,000 a year. This guide covers how benefit charges hit payroll taxes, when protesting is worth it, why misconduct excludes poor performance, the documentation that wins telephone hearings, and the appeal ladder above them.
An auditor issues one of four opinions — unqualified, qualified, adverse, or disclaimer — decided by two questions: whether the problem is a GAAP departure or a scope limitation, and whether it is material but confined or material and pervasive. This guide maps that grid, explains why a going-concern paragraph is not a qualification, and lists the bookkeeping habits that keep an opinion clean.
CMS released an updated Advance Beneficiary Notice of Noncoverage (Form CMS-R-131) on March 13, 2026, mandatory for fee-for-service providers since May 12, 2026. With chiropractic improper payments at 30.4% and nearly 90% of those errors from insufficient documentation, this guide covers ABN trigger points, the GA/GZ/GY modifiers, and the bookkeeping that turns signed notices into collected cash.
