Yes, I know they’re calling it a “business net receipts tax” (BNRT), but a value-added tax is essentially what it is. And it’s the core feature of the long-awaited final report issued today by California’s Commission on the 21st Century Economy, which envisages a massive transformation of the state’s corporate and individual tax structures. more

More than two years ago, TJX Companies announced that more than 45 million credit and debit card numbers were stolen from its information systems. The data breach, the largest of its kind, required the off-price retailer (whose stores include T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, HomeGoods, and others) to file an explanation with the SEC.

Since then, data breaches and information security risks have steadily increased. To get a better handle on the nature and source of these risks — and how companies can address them from a GRC perspective — I asked Brian Cleary, a vice president with Aveksa, a provider of enterprise access governance solutions, several questions. Cleary helpfully couched his responses in terms that non-IT managers can follow while fleshing out the nature of insider threats, orphaned accounts, and “entitlement drag.” more

The Tax Foundation, a Washington, DC-based think tank, has released its annual ranking of the “business-friendliness” of state tax systems, based on what it describes as “the taxes that matter most to businesses and business investment: corporate income, individual income, sales, property, and unemployment insurance taxes.”

Top slot on the State Business Tax Climate Index goes to South Dakota, which levies zero corporate or individual income tax. more

In its efforts to prevent a recurrence of the upheaval that occurred in the money market fund sector last September, the Securities and Exchange Commission is considering a number of changes to the regulations governing these funds, as noted in this SEC paper released in June.

An earlier blog post covered several of the proposals outlined by the SEC, such as a cap on the weighted average life maturity of the securities in the fund, along with the idea of allowing a fund to suspend redemptions if the fund’s value was likely to fall below $1 per share.

One proposal, however, is likely to impact corporate treasurers more than I initially thought. That’s the proposal to limit money market funds to holding just the highest-rated, or A1/P1, securities. Under current law, most money market funds can hold up to 5 percent of fund assets in A2/P2 securities. more

On Sept. 21, FCC chairman Julius Genachowski delivered a major speech affirming his intention to implement network (net) neutrality, the policy that requires all Internet traffic to be treated equally. In that speech, he added two new principles to the four existing principles that have been the foundation of the stunning success of the Internet as an essential driver of the economy, and he directed the FCC to incorporate all six principles as official policy going forward.

Net neutrality calls for a neutral, pervasive, and ubiquitous broadband network free of restrictions on content, sites, or platforms, and restrictions on the kinds of equipment that may be attached or on the modes of communication allowed. In addition, net neutrality means one’s communication cannot be unreasonably degraded by other communication streams.

It is safe to say that no reader of this website could function effectively or his or her business could thrive without open, unfettered Internet access. Just think about email. That’s net neutrality. Yet there are forces opposed to net neutrality. more