The majority of people with a mobile phone or access to the internet have received unsolicited emails or calls from telemarketers (cold marketing). While the practice of cold marketing is decades-old, the recent awareness in data protection and privacy has affected this concept in recent times, particularly in relation to access to the data of consumers ...
Introductory note The State Budget Law for 2021, which was published on 31 December 2020, comes at a very difficult time that is one of great uncertainty for the State and for the country. It is clear from the outset that the changes to the tax laws are limited in scope and the focus is on issues considered essential and a priority. For example, there are absolutely no amendments to the laws regulating taxpayers’ guarantees or tax justice ...
Safe at Home Address Confidentiality Programs (ACPs) have been adopted in many states to protect domestic violence victims’ addresses and other personal information from collection and disclosure. Financial services institutions are taking strides to protect the data of participants in ACPs, but the financial services industry also faces some of the most complex issues with ACP compliance ...
On 12 January 2021, David Mathias, Tim Willis, Sam Grange and Matthew Stimson from our Planning & Environmental team hosted a webinar to discuss the main changes introduced to the existing ‘Standard Method’ used for assessing housing need in England and Wales ...
In the state of Ohio, a light-duty job offer is a strategic way to either bring an injured worker back to the workforce or bar temporary total compensation, should the injured worker reject a valid offer. Either way, it can aid employers in eliminating, minimizing, and/or stopping temporary total disability compensation from being paid in a claim ...
The second HIPAA settlement of 2021 is the first traditional enforcement action of the year. And, it’s a big one. Traditionally, OCR enforcement has been triggered by breaches. In 2020, however, we saw a significant increase in a sub-set of Privacy Rule enforcement arising out of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights’ (OCR) patient “Right of Access” initiative ...
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) just announced that Provider Relief Fund Program (PRF) recipients will now be required to submit reports regarding their use of these funds later than previously announced. The previous deadline was February 15, 2021. Currently, a specific new timeline was provided, but HHS is encouraging providers to register to receive updates ...
The year 2020 will have been difficult for the vast majority of industries, and in particular for the arts, entertainment and recreation industry. The video game industry, however, is growing in leaps and bounds. For example, Nintendo and PlayStation have each set record sales for their games released in 2020, including Animal Crossing:New Horizons and The Last of UsPart II. Over the past few decades, the number of video game players has never stopped increasing ...
The year 2020 was turbulent in many ways: the worldwide pandemic slowed down a number of reforms and caused challenges for various industries. Now it is time to look back and remind ourselves of the changes that took place in the field of employment law over the past year. It is also time to glance at the reforms awaiting us in 2021, a year hopefully brighter than its predecessor ...
The United States’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued an order that will take effect on January 26, 2021, requiring all arriving international airline passengers to provide proof of a negative COVID test taken within three days of the flight’s foreign departure. For those who have had it, the CDC will require proof of recovery ...
Although the start of 2020 also shook up the M&A world, the market recovered especially in the second half of the year. At Van Doorne, the M&A specialists experienced this in the number of transactions: 32 of them. This puts the firm in 8th place in the Mergermarket Benelux League Table, based on the number of deals. In 2020, in Europe almost $850 billion was spent on a total of 6,658 transactions. This is an increase of 5.6% compared to 2019 ...
On Dec. 22, the Ohio Senate passed the Employment Law Uniformity Act – HB 352. Governor Mike DeWine signed the bill into law on Jan. 12, 2021. The bill is the culmination of 20 years of work by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce to address expansion of Ohio’s anti-discrimination statute resulting from Ohio Supreme Court decisions that interpreted Ohio Revised Code Section 4112 expansively ...
The Court of Protection is a specialist Court, focussing solely on supporting vulnerable individuals. This past year has acutely highlighted the needs of those most vulnerable in our society and their dependency on others to help manage their affairs. The Court has had to adjust its practices in order to ensure that help and solutions are found for those lacking capacity with minimal delay ...
2020 was a year of unprecedented circumstances and change, and more change is coming in 2021—this time, in the form of significant modifications to the nationwide permitting program. On September 15, 2020, the Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) published a notice of proposed rulemaking to reissue and modify nationwide permits (NWPs), ahead of the usual five-year reauthorization schedule for the current 2017 NWPs ...
Are you concerned about the impact of Brexit on your IP lifecycle? We’ve prepared the following guidance as the introduction to our new Brexit and IP five-part info series where we detail the impacts of Brexit on the various stages of the IP lifecycle. 1 ...
The regulatory change proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the recent HIPAA Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) is another step toward HHS’s objective to encourage a patient-centric healthcare environment. The HIPAA NPRM proposes to tilt the balance of protecting privacy and facilitating the availability of information toward loosening restrictions on disclosures of patient information ...
Parliament has revised the federal telecoms legislation – in particular, the Federal Telecommunications Act (TCA) and its various implementing ordinances. These revised regulations entered into force on 1 January 2021. The revision of the telecoms legislation brings about several fundamental changes that affect consumers as well as telecoms service providers (TSPs) and telecoms operators ...
Canadian newspapers' loss of advertising revenues to the hands of internet giants over the past several years has jeopardized the very existence of many such newspapers. In 2018, our governments announced several advantageous tax measures in order to ensure the survival of independent print media ...
Key Points The CARES Act provides that PPP loans may be forgiven without causing the borrower to incur cancellation of debt income, but did not address whether business expenses could be deducted if paid for by PPP loan proceeds. On April 30, 2020, the IRS published Notice 2020-32 clarifying that taxpayers whose PPP loans were forgiven could not deduct business expenses covered by such loan proceeds ...
In light of the spread of the global Covid-19 pandemic and the discovery of a new mutation of the virus, the Israeli government has decided that as of December 23, 2020, the entry of foreigners into Israel will be banned. Further to this decision, the Population and Immigration Authority published guidelines regarding exceptional cases in which foreigners will be allowed to enter the country despite the ban ...
On January 6, 2021, Treasury issued two new Interim Final Rules (IFRs) addressing the new Economic Aid to Hard-Hit Small Businesses, Nonprofits, and Venues Act’s (Act) creation of PPP Second Draw Loans, and the Act’s various changes to PPP requirements generally. The major PPP components of the Act are set forth in detail in Buchalter’s COVID Alert of December 28, 2020 (Buchalter PPP Changes Alert), which can be found here ...
In the recently-passed Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (the “Act”), Congress provided much-needed cover for landlords that enter into forbearance agreements with their tenants during the COVID-19 pandemic by protecting landlords from exposure to preference litigation arising out of the deferred rent payments if the tenant were to later file bankruptcy ...
Key Points Effective January 1, 2021, public colleges, universities, and governmental entities whose primary purpose is providing medical or hospital care are eligible for the employee retention and rehiring tax credit. The amount of the credit is equal to 70 percent of up to $10,000 in eligible wages per employee per quarter for the first two quarters of 2021. The tax credit is claimed as an offset to employment taxes otherwise payable by the employer ...
