News & Events

However true the saying, A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, it offers little consolation to a business that has spent large sums of money and time to promote its company name or product names only to have to later change them as a result of a trademark infringement […]

Our legislature recently made important changes to the employer sanctions statutes (HB 2745) for employees hired after December 31, 2007. Unauthorized Aliens Employers that knowingly or intentionally hire, directly or indirectly, unauthorized aliens are subject to liability. Penalties include: terminating all unauthorized aliens, employer probation and terminating business licenses. Economic […]

Sample Contract Insert Containing Arizona’s New Employer Sanctions Provisions: E-verify requirements. To the extent applicable under ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 41-4401, the Contractor and its subcontractors warrant compliance with all federal immigration laws and regulations that relate to their employees and compliance with the E-verify requirements under ARIZ. REV. STAT. […]

Effective January 1, 2008, Arizona’s minimum wage will increase from $6.75/hour to $6.90/hour. Importantly, Arizona employers must pay Arizona’s rate, which is $1.05 higher than the Federal rate. Tipped employees will also benefit with an increase to at least $3.90 per hour. These increases result from the November 2006 Arizona […]

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued a new I-9 form (employment eligibility verification) that must be completed when hiring new employees. Various documents have been removed and/or added to the lists of acceptable documents to be provided by employees to prove their identity and eligibility to work in the […]

Effective September 19, 2007, all subcommittees, advisory boards or commissions of a public body will be required to keep minutes under a recently adopted amendment to Arizona’s Open Meeting Law. Such subcommittees and advisory boards will now be required to make available to the public the minutes of a meeting, […]

Arizona employers will have to contend with two new employment mandates this Fall and at the start of 2008. New Federal Homeland Security requirements, effective September 12, 2007, apply to Social Security Administration no-match letters. On January 1, 2008, a new state law becomes effective prohibiting the hiring of unauthorized […]

The Arizona Board of Education has adopted new regulations that govern school district procurement of construction services using alternative project delivery methods, including construction-manager-at-risk, design-build, job-order contracting and qualified select bidders list methods. The new regulations provide school districts direction on the procurement and contracting of these alternative project deliver […]

New IRS regulations have changed the manner in which we will communicate with you when giving tax advice. The new rules are found in Treasury Department Circular 230, which governs our practice before the IRS. In the past, many taxpayers who participated in aggressive tax shelters defended themselves against penalties […]

If you created a family limited partnership (FLP) in connection with your estate planning, this alert is for you. The IRS is auditing virtually every U.S. estate tax return where one of the assets was an interest in a FLP and a discount was claimed on the value of that […]