Accusations Are Serious, Groundless Or Not
Today’s business environment is more regulated than at perhaps any other time in American history. While there are whispers on the winds of decreased business regulations, and the market believes in this change to the tune of a more than two trillion dollar positive Wall Street hike, this doesn’t mean regulations will disappear overnight.
While it does indicate the “squeeze” has been reduced, there are still laws on the books that can sneak up on a business and undermine them. At any given time, it’s likely your business is breaking some regulation which can be used against you by the right (or wrong?) attorney to the detriment of operations.
Certainly there are those operations which have covered all their bases; but law transforms so regularly, this is difficult. Forbes.com lists ten common ways businesses break the laws often unintentionally.
Exploring Areas Where Businesses Accidentally Break The Law
Forbes’ list includes, but is not limited to: failure to make federal payroll tax deposits, inadvertent destruction of documents relevant to litigation, investor funds used improperly, failure to charge, report, or collect sales tax, and overselling qualifications when making a government contract bid.
Several more common illegal practices are not marking patented products, federal wage and hour statute non-compliance, mistaken sale of recalled products, improper billing of Medicare and other government services, and improperly itemized or excessive tax return deductions.
A few of those are a little bit obscure, aren’t they? They’re the kind of mistakes which are easy to make. An excessive tax return deduction charge could result from something that seemed harmless; like a business dinner which demonstrably resulted in a merger or acquisition. The dinner was purely business, but was deducted improperly.
Competitors May Be Underhanded Enough To Prosecute
When you’ve got stiff competition looking at your operations very closely, they’ll do everything they can to find ways your business isn’t working within the rule of law. What’s easier: providing better services and products, or using legal strictures to shut down those who work in opposition to you?
The basic, common losses listed here don’t include things like environmentally friendly energy usage and waste disposal, which can likewise make a business culpable to fines or other substantial legal recriminations that seem to creep up on established operations.
According to RubinsteinLawOffices.com, a firm who specializes in providing lawyers for criminal cases, “A prosecutor’s job is to convict you and then sentence you as harshly as possible.” Sometimes it’s nothing personal; what has happened is that increasing the severity of legal “punishment” becomes the job of your opponent. To them it’s business.
For these reasons and others it makes sense to source legal representation available for consultation on all activities which you may feel are a “gray” area, or are otherwise ill-defined. Additionally, you may want legal representation to simply go through your operations and ensure there are no areas where criminal activity could be proposed.
Avoiding The Impact Of Criminal Accusations
The term “criminal” has a lot of weight behind it, and even should the courts find your business entirely innocent, there are likely PR losses that will accrue as a result. Especially if your business is large, or has some existing financial momentum, the prospect of a court case becomes newsworthy and could negatively impact you.
Today’s litigative world requires close attention to detail in order to ensure compliance and proactive expansion. Depending on your political leanings, even entirely legitimate practices can be called into question by media outlets who hail from an opposing political perspective. However, if you have representation, damages can be diminished.
