#compliance
Navigate regulatory compliance and maintain audit-ready financial records
Forty-five states require scrap yards to keep seller-ID records, cash caps run as low as $30 (Washington), and IRS Form 8300 is due within 15 days on cash over $10,000. A practical guide to building a purchase ledger that survives police, state regulator, and IRS scrutiny.
For 2026 the standard SIMPLE IRA elective deferral limit is $17,000, but employers with 25 or fewer employees (or 26-100 that raise their match) get an enhanced $18,100 limit under SECURE 2.0 — and a rounding quirk means the enhanced-tier catch-up contribution is actually lower than the standard one.
Washington, Maryland, and Maine now tax IT support, consulting, and technology services as retail sales, and California's SB 122 makes SaaS taxable starting January 2027 — service businesses should check economic nexus and taxability state by state before the next filing deadline.
In 2026 the Subchapter V small-business bankruptcy debt limit is $3,424,000, down from the pandemic-era $7.5 million ceiling that expired in June 2024 — a bill in Congress could restore the higher threshold for businesses currently locked out of the cheaper reorganization track.
The USMCA's mandatory six-year joint review began July 1, 2026, giving the US, Mexico, and Canada until 2036 to decide whether to extend the agreement—small businesses claiming preferential tariff treatment should audit certificates of origin now, since a paperwork gap can be treated as customs fraud during heightened review-period scrutiny.
Visa lowered its VAMP excessive-merchant threshold from 2.2% to 1.5% on April 1, 2026, with fines of $8 per flagged transaction, and Mastercard's Excessive Chargeback Program still triggers at 100+ monthly chargebacks — here's how the ratio math catches small merchants off guard and how to bring it back under the line.
A May 19, 2026 executive order pushes banks and fintechs closer together, reviving the layered-partnership risks the 2024 Synapse collapse exposed — here's what small business owners should watch and do before the 90- and 180-day regulatory deadlines hit in August and November 2026.
Nineteen states raised their minimum wage on January 1, 2026, and Florida steps up to $15.00 on September 30. This guide covers which rate applies when federal, state, and local minimums overlap, how tipped-wage and exempt-threshold rules shift alongside the headline number, and how to budget for the pay-compression ripple effect across your wage ladder.
Under 19 CFR 111.29, customs brokers must book client duty payments as liabilities, remit funds to CBP within five working days, and furnish a written accounting statement within 60 calendar days — a discipline that also protects duty drawback claims, which can recover up to 99% of duties paid on later-exported goods.
The DOL formally vacated the 2024 overtime rule on May 14, 2026, reverting the federal exempt salary threshold to $684/week ($35,568/year); small employers who reclassified staff in 2024 should re-check duties tests and state thresholds before undoing anything.
Belgium requires structured B2B e-invoices via Peppol from January 1, 2026; France follows September 1, 2026; Poland's KSeF phases in February–April 2026; Germany mandates issuing in 2027–2028. What US exporters and SaaS sellers must do — required formats (UBL, Factur-X, XRechnung), network access, and penalties up to 100% of the invoice's VAT.
A dozen states now have earned wage access laws as of 2026, and the CFPB reversed its own TILA guidance in December 2025 — employer-sponsored EWA tied to verified wages is currently the lower-risk path, while California classifies direct-to-consumer EWA as a loan outright.
