Plain-text accounting insights, tutorials, and updates from the Beancount.io team.
Business brokers and M&A advisors charge Double Lehman commissions of 10% down to 2% by tier, but minimum fee floors, non-creditable retainers, expense reimbursement, and tail clauses routinely add 5-20% on top of the quoted success-fee percentage.
Indiana, Kentucky, and Rhode Island's consumer privacy laws took effect January 1, 2026, and two have no revenue threshold — here's how small businesses determine if they're covered and how to track the revenue percentages these laws require.
Sri Lanka now charges 18% VAT on digital services sold by non-resident providers once revenue exceeds LKR 36 million a year or LKR 9 million in a quarter, effective July 1, 2026, with quarterly filing and registration due within three months of crossing the threshold.
The SBA's June 11, 2026 proposed rule eliminates the 8(a) program's race-based social disadvantage presumption for individually owned firms, requiring every applicant to document group-level discrimination and personal material harm instead — with the public comment period closing July 13, 2026.
The diameter × height × multiplier formula that most bowl turners use to price work ignores cracked blanks, drying time, and overhead — accounting them correctly as a separate spoilage loss (not folded into COGS) reveals whether a shop's pricing actually covers its real costs.
Israeli freelancers must convert from osek patur (VAT-exempt) to osek murshe (VAT-charging) status once annual invoiced revenue crosses ₪120,000, with the conversion retroactive to the crossing date and closed-list professions like architects and lawyers required to register as osek murshe from their first shekel.
New York's General Business Law § 396-ii took effect March 21, 2026, requiring statewide retailers and restaurants to accept cash and barring cash surcharges, with civil penalties up to $1,000 for a first violation and $1,500 for each one after.
Nacha's Phase 2 ACH fraud monitoring rule took effect June 19, 2026, requiring nearly every business that originates ACH payments to run a documented, risk-based fraud monitoring process covering account ownership verification, change monitoring, anomaly detection, and audit trails.
Mobile IV and wellness injection bars must structure ownership as a physician-owned PC plus an MSO to satisfy corporate-practice-of-medicine rules, pay medical directors a flat monthly fee rather than a percentage of revenue, and classify nurses as W-2 employees in ABC-test states — each decision maps directly to a different chart-of-accounts structure.
Starting January 1, 2026, anyone whose 2025 FICA wages exceeded $150,000 must direct their entire 401(k) catch-up contribution — $8,000 standard or $11,250 for ages 60-63 — into a Roth account, with no pre-tax option and no opt-out.
Indian freelancers face two independent tax systems — Section 44ADA presumptive income tax (50% of gross receipts up to ₹75 lakh) and GST registration at the ₹20 lakh turnover threshold — plus Section 194J TDS withholding, and conflating the two is the most common costly mistake.
An employee is a registration before the first paycheck — EIN, state withholding and SUI, workers' comp bound, W-4 and I-9 in 3 days, new-hire report in 20 days, 941 deposits by EFTPS.
