#compliance
Navigate regulatory compliance and maintain audit-ready financial records
PCI DSS 4.0's transition period ended March 31, 2025, so every merchant assessment from 2026 onward now enforces mandatory payment-page script monitoring, MFA for all cardholder-data access, and authenticated internal vulnerability scans — noncompliance risks $5,000-$100,000 monthly fines from acquiring banks plus an average $173,692 added breach cost per IBM's research.
Under ASU 2020-07 (ASC 958-605), nonprofits must record donated goods, services, and facility use at fair value on a separate line item and disclose valuation methodology by category, or risk an auditor flagging the financial statements.
Business wire transfers are governed by UCC Article 4A, not Regulation E, meaning a company can be held liable for a fraudulent wire if its bank's security procedure was commercially reasonable, even though 86% of the FBI's $3.05 billion in 2025 BEC losses moved via wire or ACH.
SECURE 2.0 Section 110 lets employers match 401(k), 403(b), SIMPLE IRA, or governmental 457(b) contributions based on an employee's student loan payments instead of elective deferrals, and plan sponsors adopting the feature must formally amend their plan documents by December 31, 2026.
Indoor tanning services carry a 10% federal excise tax reported quarterly on IRS Form 720 Part II, and salons that don't isolate it in a dedicated liability account and itemize bundled packages are the ones examiners flag.
True endowments are created by donor restriction and governed by UPMIFA; board-designated endowments are unrestricted funds the board chose to treat like an endowment and can undesignate at any time — mixing up the two is the most common misstep auditors flag in nonprofit endowment reviews.
Visa and Mastercard's 2026 interchange settlement caps credit card surcharges at 3% of the transaction or the merchant's actual cost of acceptance, whichever is lower, and requires 30 days' written notice to your processor before you can start charging it.
Automatic gratuities fail the IRS's four-factor tip test and must be taxed as wages, which excludes them from the FICA tip credit, the FLSA overtime rate, and the new "no tax on tips" deduction.
The CFPB's Section 1071 small business lending rule takes effect January 1, 2028, requiring lenders that originate at least 1,000 covered small business credit transactions annually to collect and report data on applicants with $1 million or less in gross annual revenue, including optional demographic information.
Since September 2025, new H-1B petitions requiring consular processing carry a $100,000 supplemental fee on top of standard filing costs, pushing all-in sponsorship for small employers from roughly $5,500–$10,500 to $105,000–$110,000 per hire in 2026.
US importers of record can file IEEPA tariff refunds in CBP's CAPE portal for entries from Feb 2025 — steps and documents.
Nonprofit directors carry three legal fiduciary duties — care, loyalty, and obedience — and courts have held boards personally liable for failing to ask basic questions about how the organization spent its money.
