Last week I was out for an early morning walk. I often leave before dark to get in a few miles before the tasks of the day call. This morning the sun had just broken over the horizon. As it rose in the eastern sky it was the perfect angle so that my body cast a really long shadow. Literally it was 300 feet long. As I looked at it I felt extremely fortunate to enjoy that sunrise as well to work with giants in the finance world who cast equally long shadows. They are men who can teach us all so much.

One such giant of a man was my friend, my colleague, my mentor Jeremy Hope. It is with great sadness that I and the other members of the Beyond Budgeting leadership team inform you that the BBRT co-founder, Jeremy Hope, passed away on the evening of 26 September after a relatively short period of severe illness. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife and family at this time.

Jeremy was the catalyst that started this column. more

As my post from earlier this year outlines, the idea of crowdfunding – that is, the use of online sites to garner investments from individuals – had attracted the attention, largely positive, of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Now it appears that the White House and Congress are interested, as well. A White House Fact Sheet on The American Jobs Act, introduced earlier this month, states that “as part of the President’s Startup America initiative, the Administration will work with the SEC to conduct a comprehensive review of securities regulations from the perspective of these small companies to reduce the regulatory burdens on small business capital formation in ways that are consistent with investor protection, including expanding “crowdfunding” opportunities and increasing mini-offerings.” more

I-9 compliance. EU data privacy requirements. Verification of dependents under the 2012 U.S. health care reform law. Federal payroll taxes.

The number of compliance risks within the human resources (HR) function seems to be outpacing the growth of risks in other parts of the organization, including corporate finance. Yet, unlike many HR managers and executive, most finance and accounting folks are intimately familiar with audits. more

Classifying a worker as an employee or an independent contractor has significant consequences for a business, as employees are covered by a host of labor laws and tax regulations that typically don’t apply to contractors. Last week, the IRS launched a program, under its “Fresh Start,” initiative, that it says will help employers resolve issues around worker classification.

The program appears to be geared to employers who had classified workers as contractors when they more accurately would have been classified as employees. The “Voluntary Classification Settlement Program” (VCSP) allows employers to begin complying with worker classification regulations by voluntarily reclassifying their workers as employees and making a payment generally equal to 10 percent of the employment tax liability that may have been due on the worker’s compensation for the most recent tax year, according to this explanation of the program from the IRS. more

According to a study conducted by the Verizon RISK Team with cooperation from the U.S. Secret Service and the Dutch High Tech Crime Unit, a total of 3.8 million data records were compromised across 760 reported data breaches in 2010. Was yours one of them?

Actually, this is good news. The study indicated a significant decrease in the number of compromised records from the prior two years. The researchers attributed the declining trend of data breaches to the collaborative effort between the US Secret Service and the industry to combat computer cybercrimes and increased security awareness.

Computer forensic and IT security expert Peter Kiilu reviewed the key findings and learning points from the Verizon 2011 Data Breach Investigations Report. You can access the report from here. As part of the report, he suggests controls that companies can implement to significantly reduce the risk of data breach and the related financial losses. more