#legal
Legal considerations for business finance and accounting compliance
ERISA Section 409 imposes personal liability on 401(k) plan fiduciaries, and the corporate veil does not shield small business owners. This guide explains the prudent-expert standard, the Tibble v. Edison duty to monitor, and how hiring a Section 3(38) investment manager shifts investment discretion — and most related liability — away from the plan sponsor.
IOLTA violations triggered 1,247 attorney discipline cases in 2025. As twelve states adopt a 30-day reconciliation deadline on July 1, 2026, this guide walks through how three-way reconciliation works, the workflow that keeps individual client ledgers tied to the bank balance, and the mistakes that most often end legal careers.
A practitioner's guide to representations and warranties insurance (RWI) for middle-market M&A in 2026 — how buy-side and sell-side policies work, premiums around 2.5–3% of limit with retentions near 0.5%, the top breach categories driving claims, and when traditional escrow still wins.
Section 162(m) caps a public company's federal deduction for executive pay at $1 million per person. Starting in 2026, OBBBA aggregates compensation across the IRC § 414 controlled group — including partnerships and LLCs — and the ARPA expansion adds the five highest-paid employees to the covered list in 2027.
Section 6694 imposes preparer penalties of $1,000 or 50% of fees for unreasonable positions, escalating to $5,000 or 75% for willful or reckless conduct. Section 6695(g) adds roughly $650 per EITC, CTC, AOTC, or head-of-household failure on every return. Here is how CPAs and EAs document, disclose, and defend their way out of them.
How the federal WARN Act triggers a 60-day notice clock at 100 employees, the three narrow exceptions, the back-pay and $500-per-day penalties, and the state mini-WARN laws (NY, NJ, CA) that quietly raise the bar to 90 days, 25 employees, or mandatory severance.
California SB 253 and SB 261 require companies with $500M+ revenue doing business in California to disclose Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions and publish TCFD-aligned climate risk reports. The first SB 253 emissions report is due August 10, 2026 — here is who is in scope, what to file, and how to prepare.
FinCEN's March 2025 interim final rule narrowed the Corporate Transparency Act so U.S.-formed entities no longer file BOI reports, but foreign-formed entities registered in U.S. states still must file within 30 days, and New York's LLC Transparency Act took effect January 1, 2026 for foreign LLCs authorized to do business there.
Employment Practices Liability Insurance costs small businesses roughly $800 to $3,000 a year, but a single uncovered discrimination, harassment, or wrongful termination claim averages $80,000 in defense costs—here is what EPLI covers, how carriers price it, and how to buy it without overpaying.
A practical guide to fiscal sponsorship — how Model A (9–15% fees) and Model C (4–10% fees) differ, how donations flow legally, what an agreement must cover, and when a project should graduate to its own 501(c)(3).
Section 6501 gives the IRS three years from filing to assess tax — but the window stretches to six years for omissions over 25% of gross income or basis overstatements, and never closes at all for unfiled returns, fraud, or undisclosed foreign reporting. A practical guide to ASED, refund claim windows under Section 6511, the 10-year CSED, Form 872 consents, and what records to keep.
A 2026 guide to the Series LLC: how a single master entity can hold multiple internally-isolated series, which states recognize the structure (Florida joins via SB 316 on July 1, 2026), how the IRS taxes each series, the bookkeeping discipline required to keep the liability walls intact, and when separate traditional LLCs remain the safer choice.
