Category Archives: Political
Employment Law Update – How up to date are you?
By Daniel Richardson Is your employee handbook up to date? An up to date employee handbook is important because it outlines for the employee the employer’s policies and procedures as well as establishing the expected standards. Using an employee handbook from the outset of the employment relationship to establish expected standards can be invaluable […]
Game of — Pawns?
The FBI tells the story of Glenn Shriver, a former college student from Michigan who learned Mandarin and lived in China in 2004. He made some friends who encouraged him to find a job with the US government. He received some $70,000 merely to apply for such a job, but by the time the FBI arrested him, he realized that his friends were actually intelligence agents wanting to place a mole inside US agencies.
National agencies are not the only targets. US companies are also subject to foreign espionage. Just last month, the Justice Department announced indictments of five members of China’s military for stealing US companies’ trade secrets.
Unclassy Action
By Andrew Jacobson The class action lawsuit that engineers brought against seven of the biggest Silicon Valley companies has been tentatively settled for about $324 million. Divided equally among the 64,000 class members after paying attorneys’ fees, each engineer would get about $3,500 – about one paycheck per engineer, hardly the mother lode some were […]
Scam Alert — Court “Notice of Appearance”
by Andrew Jacobson If you receive a “court notice” via email, don’t open it — it is a scam designed to add to your computer malware designed to get you to give over control of your computer to somebody else. We started receiving these a few weeks ago, but it may only just have started getting […]
Crowdfunding Your Business – An Intro to Title III of the JOBS Act
By Daniel Richardson On April 5, 2012, the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act) became law. The JOBS Act seeks to “increase job creation and economic growth by improving access to the public capital markets for emerging growth companies.”[1] Title III of the JOBS Act or the “Capital Raising Online While Deterring Fraud and […]
Earned Income Tax Credit Notice
California employers, take note: you are required to give notice to all your employees about the earned income tax credit at about the time you give them their W-2 or 1099 forms. If you have individuals who are independent contractors, give them notice as well. Here is the recommended language, which you can print on […]
California Creates New Corporate Structures Enabling For-Profit Corporations To Consider the Public Benefit
Sharon Adams Introduction In January 2012, California created two new state corporate structures: (1) flexible purpose corporations, and (2) benefit corporations. Unlike traditional for-profit corporations, these new corporate structures are required to provide for benefit to the public. Unlike traditional non-profit corporations, these new corporate entities are not tax […]
Veterans
Bay Oak Law’s own Daniel Gwozdz was recognized by the Bar Association of San Francisco on Veteran’s Day for his service in the US Army between 2000 and 2005. Dan was a scout for the legendary 10th Mountain Division, and served during operations in Operation Joint Guardian in Kosovo, and Operation Iraqi Freedom.
A Wait at the Gate
For all those employers (all none of you) ready to race ahead and give notices to employees about health insurance exchanges, you are going to have to hold off for awhile. Despite the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”) requirement that employers provide written notice (1) informing the employee of the existence of an Exchange, including a […]
Taxing Taxes
A former co-worker of mine, David Spence of the Royce Law Firm, was quoted in a Forbes blog today about Cutler v. Franchise Tax Board, where the California Second District Court of Appeal ruled as unconstitutional Cal. Rev. & Tax. Code § 18152.5 which allows sellers of small business stock (called “qualified small business stock” or “QSBS”) […]
