There is a section in the EEOC compliance manual that provides details on who should be considered and employee. If your independent contractors have been working for you continuously for a long time, don't work for anyone else, and you direct most aspects of their work (hours, location, etc), then there is a good chance you should be treating them as employees (withholding taxes, providing any benefits that you intend to make available to regular employees, etc). If your are using various independent contractors on a project by project basis and they are largely in control of how and when they work, have their own equipment, tools, etc to get the job done, then there is a good chance that they are legitimate contractors. However, you should only make this determination based on advice from legal counsel with a thorough understanding of FLSA, EEOC, and IRS requirements.

answered

Under ACA, businesses with fewer than 50 employees are not subject to tax penalties if they don't provide employee health insurance benefits, but they may be eligible for certain tax credits if they do provide plans.

answered

There can be many risks associated with any non disclosure agreement (NDA); however, it seems that your question is specific to the risks associated with the unilateral aspect of the NDA. Typically, the argument for a unilateral NDA is that only one party needs to disclose confidential information so the other party should agree to protect that information. In practice, most situations that call for an NDA involve an interaction or exchange of some sort and often that interaction may involve unstructured sharing of information, such as phone calls and meetings, that make it difficult to ensure that confidential information is disclosed by only one of the parties. As a result, the primary risk of the unilateral NDA is that it leaves one party exposed if the interaction or information exchange does not proceed exactly as initially envisioned. In addition, the party that is receiving the benefits of the unilateral NDA but not agreeing to its obligations has no incentive to ensure that the obligations are reasonable. For these reasons, it is common to negotiate a mutual NDA even when the information exchange is anticipated to be one-sided.

answered

A Business Associate Agreement (BAA) is an agreement between a health provider and another entity (such as a supplier or a healthcare professional) that provides services to the health provider or its customers where those services may involve health information protected under HIPAA of the health provider's patients or customers. The primary purpose of the BAA is to define the requirements for the sharing and use of protected health information in the course of services provided by the business associate entity (including defining how data breaches will be handled). It is critical to track any breaches of BAA agreements and either the resulting correction of issues that caused the breach or the termination of the contract and handling of protected health information in that event. It is also critical to track whether or not valid and current BAAs exist with all providers that fall under the HIPAA definition of a business associate.

answered

The most common approach that I have seen in California is to rely on confidentiality agreements to protect trade secrets in the event that an employee goes to work for a competitor. See the link for a general overview of non compete issues in California. https://www.upcounsel.com/non-compete-california

answered

Each state has different regulations regarding whether or not sales of services like advertising are taxable. Generally speaking, a business is obligated to collect sales taxes in states where it has nexus. Since your business is located in Texas, it has tax nexus in that state and you should review the tax regulations in other states where you may have nexus. Online advertising services are not considered taxable services in Texas. You can review the full list of taxable services in Texas with descriptions from the Texas Comptroller website link below. https://comptroller.texas.gov/taxes/publications/96-259.php

answered

This answer is coming far too late to be useful to you, but hopefully of some use to future readers. One likely scenario is that the investors are trying to ensure that they get more favorable terms on any future round even if the valuation for that round is below the agreed valuation cap.

answered

ADA is primarily applied to employment, public accomodations, telecommunications and government. For your small nonprofit, the employment and public accommodations regulations could apply in certain situations depending on the number of employees you have (if more than 15) and whether or not you operate one or more locations that could be considered public accommodations (providing lodging, food, etc). See the source link below for a good summary of ADA requirements. Regarding the specific scenario of providing interpreter services at your conference. Your conference may not be subject to sign language interpreting requirements under ADA since there may be many other reasonable alternatives for the hearing impaired to take advantage of what the conference offers (such as written materials provided or displayed) and, more importantly, the conference itself may not be subject to ADA regulations at all since it may not meet the definition of a public accommodation and the regulations may place an undue burden on your organization. https://www.access-board.gov/guidelines-and-standards/buildings-and-sites/about-the-ada-standards

answered