Mark Milton

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On May 11, 2016, President Obama signed the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 (DTSA), which amended the Economic Espionage Act of 1996 to create a federal civil remedy for trade secret misappropriation. The DTSA governs misappropriations occurring after the effective date of May 11, 2016.

Although trade secret theft has been a federal crime since 1996, civil claims for trade secret misappropriation were almost always governed by state law. A corporation unable to establish a basis for federal jurisdiction was thus limited to state court. Although every state but two has adopted a variation of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, these statutory variations and differing court interpretations created uncertainty in the application of trade secret law, an area of growing importance for companies increasingly dependent on electronic security.

On December 17, 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that its Environmental and Natural Resources Division (ENRD) will increase efforts to work with the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to investigate and prosecute crimes related to workplace violations. According to the DOJ’s Deputy Attorney General Sally Quillian Yates, “On an average day in America, 13 workers die on the job, thousands are injured and 150 succumb to diseases they obtained from exposure to carcinogens and other toxic and hazardous substances while they worked.” As such, Ms. Yates said the DOJ is “redoubling its efforts to hold accountable those who unlawfully jeopardize workers’ health and safety.”

On December 4, 2015, President Obama signed legislation authorizing the federal government to revoke, deny, or limit passports for individuals with a “seriously delinquent tax debt.” The law defines “seriously delinquent tax debt” as owing the IRS more than $50,000 in tax, penalties, and interest. The measure, slipped into the enormous–more than 1,300 pages–highway funding bill [Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act (“Fast Act”)], gives the State Department the authority to revoke, deny or limit passports for anyone the IRS certifies as owing more than $50,000 in tax debt. Taxpayers with current installment agreements with the IRS, whereby they have agreed to pay their tax debt over time, are exempted from the law.

There has been much debate recently about state income tax rates and/or states having no income tax at all. Recently on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough said he knows a lot of people who do what they can to avoid spending 180 plus days in his current state of Connecticut in order to avoid paying income tax there (Connecticut is currently considering hiking its state income tax rate). The reality is that while spending 183 days in a no income tax state like Florida can help establish residency there, meeting this threshold does not completely resolve the residency question or eliminate the legal requirement to file tax returns and/or pay income tax in other states. Indeed many states with income taxes are cracking down on “snowbirds” who attempt to claim residency in places like Florida and Nevada (no income tax states), but who also maintain homes in income tax states like Missouri, Ohio, and Michigan.

On September 8, 2014, the state of Illinois begins accepting applications for medicinal marijuana dispensary and cultivation center permits. Under the state’s Compassionate Use of Medical Cannabis Pilot Program Act, passed last year, Illinois will grant one cannabis cultivation permit for each of its 22 state police districts and as many as 60 medicinal marijuana dispensary permits throughout the state.

In 2014, several payroll tax service providers allegedly embezzled millions of dollars in federal payroll tax payments from their clients. In June, the owner of Checkmaster Payroll Service in Massachusetts was indicted for allegedly stealing client funds that were supposed to have been used to pay clients’ federal employment taxes. The owner allegedly provided clients with “client copy” tax returns indicating that the taxes had been paid to the IRS, when they had not.  The owner also allegedly falsely told his clients that payroll tax delinquency notices that they had received from the IRS were the result of administrative errors by the IRS, not his company’s failure to remit the payroll taxes.