On Halloween, the IRS treated employers and health flexible spending account participants to a change in the longstanding “use it or lose it” rule. Beginning immediately, employers may amend their cafeteria plans to allow participants to carry over up to $500 of unused FSA funds at the end of the plan year so that the carryover can be used to reimburse qualified medical expenses incurred in the following plan year. In addition, the amount carried over will not count against the permitted $2,500 salary reduction limit applicable to the next plan year. According to the guidance, however, a plan cannot …
A True “Black Swan”: How unpaid internships were good, but are now bad
I love when a movie comes out that makes me smarter, even without watching it. A good example is The Black Swan. I had never heard of such a thing and had no idea what it symbolized before Fox bombed the airwaves with commercials featuring dark, elegant-looking shots of Natalie Portman in ominous poses. Intrigued, I looked up the metaphorical use of a black swan in literature and film. I learned that a black swan represents an event that surprises the observer, has a major effect on the observer and others, which is usually negative, but is often inappropriately rationalized …
How to Increase the Odds that the Loser Really Pays
Often, a client seeking our advice asks if they can recover their attorney’s fees in a lawsuit. We explain that an award of attorney’s fees to a prevailing party only occurs in a few situations: when a Federal or State law mandates an attorney fee award to the lawsuit’s winner, or when a court, in its discretion, determines that the behavior of the losing party is so egregious that punitive damages and attorney’s fees should be awarded. We explain that the necessary egregious behavior needs to almost rise to the level of criminal activity before a court will even consider …
When Charity Invites Liability, a Simple Contract Can Help
If you are a small business owner, you may often consider how you can give back to the community or make a charitable use of your commercial property. Picture this: A local nonprofit is hosting a 5K race and asks to use your business’s parking lot as a pre-race staging area. While you would like to help out the nonprofit (and get some good PR in the process), you are concerned about liability. If someone gets hurt at the race, could your business be sued for its involvement? The old saying is that “no good deed goes unpunished,” but, with …
When Employees Commit Electronic Theft
For business owners, holding an edge in the market depends on safe communication and storage of data and proprietary information. While theft of trade secrets once conjured up the image of cumbersome files bring stuffed into a briefcase, loss of essential data now occurs with the simple click of a mouse. In August, two New York men were charged with compiling and stealing information from their employer with the intention of using it to start their own business. The info allegedly taken from their employer, Manhattan-based Flow Traders, included proprietary computer code, trade strategies, and valuation algorithms. According to the …
Supreme Court Asked to Decide If Corporations Have Religious Freedom
As discussed in an earlier blog post, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) created a controversy about whether for-profit corporations have religious freedom. The issue concerns the requirement under ACA that health insurance sufficient to avoid penalties must include coverage for certain forms of birth control. Businesses closely held by families with strong religious convictions are objecting to this requirement as an infringement of religious freedom. In June Hobby Lobby and Mardel, Christian corporations owned by the same family, received a court order preventing the federal government from enforcing the contraception requirement and any related penalties. Also in …
Do For-Profit Corporations Have Religious Freedom?
A provision under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) has raised the question of whether for-profit corporations have religious freedom. The ACA through guidelines from the Health Resources and Services Administration requires that non-grandfathered group health plans and individual health insurance cover, without cost to the individual, all FDA-approved contraceptive methods. The FDA-approved methods include contraception known as the “morning-after pill” and the “week-after pill”, which the FDA has acknowledged can terminate pregnancy after conception. While exemptions for contraception coverage have been made for religious non-profit corporations, no exemptions are available to for-profit corporations. In Oklahoma (10th Circuit …
Your Business May be Owed a Tax Return
Getting an unexpected bonus is always nice, especially if you own a small business. On December 18, 2012, Ohio Governor Kasich and Tax Commissioner Joe Testa announced that the Ohio Department of Taxation (ODT) is implementing a new policy of notifying business taxpayers of potential tax overpayments, beginning with the Commercial Activity Tax (CAT). The ODT has already identified about 3,500 CAT taxpayers that may be eligible for refunds totaling $13.7M. ODT believes that approximately 11,000 CAT taxpayers will be eligible for tax refunds. ODT will send letters to all potentially eligible business taxpayers notifying them that they may be …