Owners of smaller businesses can sometimes be careless about keeping records of business expenses for tax purposes. The good news is that there’s no one right way to keep these records. According to the IRS, you can use any method of tracking expenses you like if it works for you and your business. However, whatever method you use, you still have to be able to substantiate the time, place, amount, and business purpose of each expense,

Most stores that lease space in a mall or other commercial area would like a guarantee that the landlord won’t also rent to a competing business. This guarantee is known as “exclusive use,” and you can negotiate for it in a lease. If you’re negotiating a right to exclusive use, here are some things to consider: What’s the use? You’ll want to specifically define your “use,” and what kinds of other businesses are allowed. For instance,

If salespeople connect with their business contacts on LinkedIn or another social media site, can they take that information with them when they leave the company? Maybe not, according to a federal court in California. David Oakes worked for six years as a salesman for a cell phone accessories company. He had signed an agreement saying that he wouldn’t disclose any proprietary information, including the company’s customer base. When the company terminated him, he started a

The federal government has filed two lawsuits against companies that set up “wellness programs” for their employees. According to the government, wellness programs are perfectly fine if they’re voluntary – but these two companies’ programs weren’t really “voluntary” because workers were penalized if they didn’t participate. Many employers have started wellness programs recently as a way to reduce health insurance costs. The programs are now used by about 94% of businesses with more than 200 workers.

If you’ve put a lot of time and money into designing a distinctive website or online store, and a competitor comes along and copies your site’s look, can you sue? Yes, according to a federal court in California. The “look and feel” of a website is protected by the trademark laws. Surprisingly, this is one of the first court rulings ever on this question. Of course, a website is different from a trademark. But a website

More than 10 percent of employees between the ages of 35 and 44 had their wages garnished last year, according to a new study by payroll company ADP. That’s a staggering figure, and it creates a serious problem for employers, who are subject to complex state and federal laws about garnishment and can be sued if they do something wrong. For years, wage garnishment was generally limited to people who fell behind on child support payments

A company can’t prohibit its workers from disclosing and discussing their salaries, according to a federal appeals court in New Orleans. That’s because federal labor law says that employees always have a right to talk about the terms and conditions of their employment. And that’s true regardless of whether the employees belong to a union. The case involved a non-union trucking company in Fort Worth, Texas that made its workers sign a confidentiality agreement. The agreement