#legal
Legal considerations for business finance and accounting compliance
Five states — Maine, Connecticut, Delaware, New York, and Colorado — now require written notice before monitoring employees. Maine's 2026 law adds annual re-notice, disclosure during hiring, and $100–$500 fines per violation, while Connecticut's expanded rules take effect October 1, 2026. Here is how to write one monitoring policy that satisfies every state.
EPA's TSCA Section 8(a)(7) rule requires manufacturers and importers of roughly 770 PFAS chemicals to report production, use, and disposal data back to January 1, 2011. The submission window now opens January 31, 2027 (or 60 days after a final scope rule), with proposed exemptions for articles and concentrations at or below 0.1% — here's what small businesses should document now.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Florida's SB 364 passed the Senate 35-0 but died without a House hearing on March 13, 2026 — the second straight year the CPA licensure-modernization bill failed. Florida still requires 150 semester hours, out-of-state CPAs still rely on substantial-equivalency mobility, and FICPA plans to refile in 2027.
Georgia's SB 69, effective January 1, 2026, requires litigation funders to register with the Department of Banking and Finance via NMLS, makes funding agreements of $25,000 or more discoverable, caps funder fees at net recovery, and bars foreign-adversary funding. Here's what small business owners should verify before accepting a litigation funding offer.
New Jersey's Family Leave Act drops its employer-coverage threshold from 30 to 15 employees on July 17, 2026 (then 10 in 2027 and 5 in 2028), while employee eligibility shortens from 12 months/1,000 hours to 3 months/250 hours worked.
