The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued a business alert to remind relevant firms that its Red Flag Rules will go into effect on November 1, 2008, and compliance is required as of that date. The relevant firms in question are financial institutions, which will not include any microbusinesses, and “creditors” — any firm that [...]

A new report released recently by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) recommends that enforcement action to address the tax gap should focus on the small number of large dollar non-compliant taxpayers, regardless of their structure — corporation, partnership, sole proprietor or individual. That, said panelists at a forum jointly hosted last September by the GAO, [...]

In a guest article reprinted by the MicroEnterprise Journal from the monthly Small Business Advocate newsletter, the Office of Advocacy’s John McDowell writes: “Changing markets, technology, and competition make it imperative that federal agencies periodically review how their current regulations affect small business. Only with regular evaluation can the enormous number of current regulations be [...]

Last week, we learned that Congress does occasionally go back to see if something they did is working. This week, we also learn that Congress also sometimes goes back to fix things they screwed up. Case in point: Congress has moved pretty speedily (for them) to pass a bill that protects merchants from frivolous lawsuits [...]

Congressional Democrats have been squabbling with the Bush Administration over the need for reform in the credit card industry. Folks like House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank and Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Chairman Christopher Dodd are touting legislation, while the Administration favors less stringent industry oversight through regulatory changes. We got a [...]

The SBA Office of Advocacy was able to save small businesses about $2.5 billion in regulatory compliance costs during fiscal 2007, according to its annual report to Congress on enforcement of the Regulatory Flexibility Act. The report was released last week with a certain amount of hoopla, as this year it included its Top Ten [...]

A recently released research report by Scott Wallsten, vice president for research and senior fellow with iGrowth Global, finds that unbundling rules alone do not promote broadband penetration and, in some cases, actually depress infrastructure investment. However, he also finds that rules that both provide new entrants with access to the incumbent’s infrastructure, while minimizing [...]

One of the highlights of January in Washington took place last week when IRS National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olsen issued her annual report to Congress for the 2007 tax year. Olsen is still grousing about the tax gap, although she is more focused on administrative adjustments the IRS could make to address the problem rather [...]

More than eighty federal regulations have been nominated for review by concerned small business owners and small business advocates as a part of the SBA Office of Advocacy’s Regulatory Review and Reform initiative, the agency announced last week. The initiative, nicknamed r3, is another plank of President Bush’s effort to reduce regulatory burdens for small [...]

It has been almost seven long years but the SBA has finally published a set of proposed rules to implement the Women’s Procurement Program that has been a bone of contention for six of them. Unfortunately, the SBA studied the RAND Corporation’s research and came to the conclusion that there were only four relatively obscure [...]