#compliance
Navigate regulatory compliance and maintain audit-ready financial records
The FTC's Consumer Review Rule (16 C.F.R. Part 465) took effect October 21, 2024, and in December 2025 the agency sent its first warning letters — with civil penalties of up to $53,088 per violation and no small-business exemption. A practical guide to the six prohibited practices, from rating-conditioned rewards to review gating, and a five-step compliance checklist owners can finish in a week.
The FTC's Junk Fees Rule, in effect since May 2025, requires live-event ticket sellers and short-term lodging hosts to display all-in total prices upfront, with violations carrying civil penalties of up to $51,744 each and a $10 million StubHub settlement already on the books.
Home care agencies collect from private pay, Medicaid MCOs, and VA Aid and Attendance on three different timelines while caregiver payroll runs on a fixed biweekly schedule, so tracking AR by payer separately (not blended) is the key to forecasting cash and catching the 2026 EVV hard-edit denials that make unresolved visit exceptions permanently unbillable.
FinCEN's 2025 rule change exempted domestic U.S. companies from filing beneficial ownership reports with the government, but banks still must verify beneficial owners under the CDD Rule at account opening — a one-time cost per bank since February 2026's exceptive relief, not a repeat process for every new account.
California requires Legal Document Assistants to register with a county clerk, post a $25,000 surety bond, and pass one of four education-or-experience tests before charging clients — a licensing and revenue-recognition setup that trips up most first-time LDA owners' books.
Maryland's 3% tech-services tax (effective July 1, 2025) and Washington's ESSB 5814 (effective October 1, 2025) made IT consulting, custom software, data processing, and digital advertising taxable — even for out-of-state sellers past economic nexus thresholds. Here's what's taxable, the contract-renewal trap, and a compliance checklist.
NAR's $52.25 million Tuccori settlement, approved April 10, 2026, doesn't change buyer-agent commission rules — it makes the August 2024 Sitzer/Burnett practice changes permanent, so agents must book gross commission across multiple funding sources rather than treating deposits as a single income line.
Nebraska's mini-WARN act (LB 921) takes effect July 17, 2026, requiring employers with 100+ employees to give 90 days' written notice before a mass layoff or business closing — 50% longer than federal WARN, with a flat 100-employee trigger, stricter notice content rules, and $100/day penalties. Here's who's covered and how to build a compliant RIF checklist.
NVOCCs need a $75,000 FMC bond ($150,000 if foreign-based), a published tariff, and Form FMC-18 before moving a container — and books that pair every house bill of lading to its master bill. A practical guide to OTI licensing costs, HBL/MBL reconciliation, ASC 606 in-transit revenue, and the bookkeeping mistakes that sink first-year freight forwarders.
Eleven U.S. jurisdictions now enforce fair workweek laws requiring 14 days' schedule notice and predictability pay for changes — Starbucks paid $38.9M and Chipotle $20M for violations. Here's what multi-location retail, food service, and hospitality employers must track, what penalties cost per employee, and how to keep the three-year compliance paper trail clean.
Tennessee's HB 1034 voids noncompetes for workers earning under $70,000 in annualized compensation as of July 1, 2026, and sets 2/3/5-year presumed-reasonable durations for everyone else. Here's how small employers should audit existing agreements, calculate the threshold, and shift to nonsolicitation and NDA protection.
Effective July 1, 2026, Tennessee voids noncompete agreements for workers earning under $70,000 in total annual earnings, making it the 13th U.S. jurisdiction to tie enforceability to a compensation threshold — a shift that turns compliance into a payroll-data problem for any business with employees, contractors, or franchisees in more than one state.
