7 New Rules For Small Business In 2023 | B2B Vault: The Payment Technology Podcast | Episode 142

Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the payment technology podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, the Steve Jobs of merchant services himself, Allen Kopelman., and we'll be providing you educational information about business, fintech, payment processing, and the technology businesses are using in the world today. And in today's podcast, we'll be talking about some new rules that will affect your business in 2023. Uh, you should definitely be aware of them. They're very important changes that, you know, they get slid under the rug. You might not even be aware that, you know, it's happening.

Oh yeah, definitely. There's a few of these that I would say are going to be quite game-changing, detrimental. Well, it could cause some large companies to undertake some— some— they're gonna have to figure it out. Small businesses are gonna have to look at these rules and make some— and possibly make some changes.

So before you hop right into there, okay, um, what'd you eat for lunch today, dude?

Today? No, I just had like a protein bar.

You haven't had enough food.

Why do you say that?

Just saying you got to be more energetic.

You gotta— I'm energetic. I'm pumped up.

You're pumped?

I'm pumped for this.

I read it for this.

Yeah, I've been reading about this for, you know, we talked about this a few months ago. That these proposed rules would go into effect. And now they're going to effect.

Yes, I had red beans and rice.

So they're going to— they're going into effect. So let's just dive right in. Okay. The first one is how to classify independent contractors. Now, there was—

what is an independent contractor?

So an independent contractor is somebody like— you hire somebody, maybe like a salesperson, and they— you don't tell them, you know, basically they go out, they make sales, but you don't give them a schedule. They do whatever they want. They have some guidelines, but other than that, you know, they do whatever they want. They could work for other people. They make a sale, they make money. They don't make a sale, they don't make any money. That's one example. Another example is you drive Uber. Okay, okay. Uber classifies all their drivers as independent contractors. The way they're changing this rule around, that could change Uber's whole life. Because you gave me an example, what about a taxi driver? Exactly. Well, they have their own car, same as an Uber driver, but they have to buy a medallion or they rent a medallion, and they probably have some kind corporation set up.

Yes.

So that makes it—

and there's a union, right?

And that's a little bit of— it's a little bit of a difference.

I'd say there's a huge difference, right? Right.

And they might work for Yellow Cab, but they just— Yellow Cab only provides them with, you know, a phone number.

And so when you look at the way that they classify the business, right, as opposed to a taxi cab and that Uber, when you— it's, it's blatant. It's like, yo, this is a limousine service,, right? And then you got a taxi cab.

It's very different to me, right? So, you know, the 6 factors— we went and looked this up— of what they were talking about, and 3 of them is something that they're really pressing on. Oh, the 6 factors.

If you're in a classification rules, right?

That's what I was trying to say. Classification rules. So the 6 factors: the worker's opportunity for profit or loss depending on their managerial skill. So they're saying if that person controls profit or loss for your company, that's a question. Or they're managing people. Mm-hmm. Are they an employee or are they an independent contractor? If you're managing people, you're definitely an employee.

I would say you would be an employee.

Yes. Investments by the worker relative to the employer's investment. So who's investing more money and what's going on? Now, I say the Uber driver has his own car. I say they're an independent contractor, but I know that other states are not going along with that.

You think that they're independent contractors?

To some point, there's a— I think it's a very—

I think there's a gray area.

I think Uber is definitely operating. They don't give people a schedule. We'll get into what it is. Degree of permanence of the work relationship. You could stop driving Uber anytime you want. Okay, so I'm just saying it's, it's pretty great.

Yeah, no, when you— they're, they're definitely playing the field, that's for sure, right?

And then we'll get into 4, 5, and 6: nature and degree of control by employers, specifically scheduling, supervision, price setting, ability to work for others. Okay, the Uber— well, we'll go and we'll go down the list and talk about Uber. Extent to which work performed is an integral part of the employer's business. Skills and initiative.

Okay, well, that right there, that rule to me would set them as an employee because without the drivers, there's no Uber, right?

But let's just go down the list and talk about that. Do they affect profit and loss? Maybe if they don't give good service.

Yeah.

Okay. Are they managing others?

No.

Investment by the worker relative to the employer's investment. So the employer is not buying them a car.

No.

Now, in some cases, maybe Uber is leasing them a car. Do they? Yeah, I've heard about that. Yeah, Uber's leasing them a car.

Really?

Yeah, if you can lease a car through Uber to drive for, like, apply for a vehicle through Uber and you drive it through Uber. Yeah, really? You can use it personal, but apparently I heard that there's a program like that.

That's pretty cool.

Um, degree of permanence of the work relationship— there is, you can quit at any time. Nature and control of the employer— they don't schedule them, they don't, they don't, they supervise them somewhat but not really. Um, they don't set the price, and they could work for Lyft if they want to. True. Okay, because I see plenty of cars out there, both stickers. Yeah, they have both. Sometimes they even have a third one I've never heard of. The extent to which the work is integral. Okay, so that could— of course, any— that would go for just about anyone. And skill and initiative. So That's a gut. You gotta drive the car. It's like saying, oh, the sales guy, does he have skill and initiative? He has skills, right? But I'm saying skill to go, but he's not affecting, you know, necessarily affecting profit and loss. I think it's kind of a little bit crazy that they're— that the rules used to be much less.

So those are the 6 classification rules, right? You figure out if you're an independent contractor or an employee. That is pretty vague.

No, but let's just say— let's give another example. Let's say I have an air conditioning company. I hire you.

Yep.

Justin, go fix air conditioners. Yes. But you're an independent contractor. But here's the truck you have to drive. Okay. You need to come in at 9. You have to be here at 9 AM every day before 9 AM to get your schedule. No. Are you an independent contractor?

I'm going to tell you no, because I'm an independent contractor. But if you're telling me all that and you require me, at that point I'm your employee.

Exactly. That's where, that's where I think that— but I'm saying a lot of companies are—

do you think like these contractors are causing this issue?

Who—

where is this coming from?

Is it the businesses saying it's coming from the government? The government wants to do away— they trying to do away with this Independent contractor society. It's trying to do away with it. The whole gig society, the whole solo—

they're trying to get rid of all of us who literally make the world go around.

Like, they're trying to get rid of self— they're trying to get rid of a lot of self-employment, you know. If someone— and let's say you hire somebody—

it's an attack on freedom.

Let's say you hire somebody, you say, oh, I need you to make me 20 social media posts right? Come to my business, take pictures whenever you want. Go make me, you know, I want 3 social media posts every day, 7 days a week, right? 21, you know. And the person has their own vehicle, they drive there, their own camera, they take the pictures whenever they want, they have their own access, they have their own like dashboard that they use for tons of businesses, right? They're an independent contractor. Absolutely right. But they're trying to like say, no, that person's an employee. They're trying to, they're trying to close the, they're trying to close the gap, you know.

What gap?

Oh, the, the gap. They're trying to close the gap down and make people say, oh no, you have, that's now a part, you have to have a regular job. Is that what they're basically saying? They're the, the DOL What does that even mean?

What does that short for? Department of Losers?

No, the Department of Litigation. The Department of Labor. It just basically says here, and you know, the DOL is attempting to crack down on the perceived misclassification of independent contractors by interpreting economic realities test in a manner that will tilt towards employer status— employee status.

So right there, the way that that's written, it seems like it's tilting towards employee status, right? They want you to be an employee, right?

I want you to be an employee, and they want to restrict— it's not happening, Captain. They want to restrict it. I follow the rules. We have some independent contractors that they do sales, so thanks. It's up to them to do whatever they want. But this definitely, like, could affect, like, a lot of, a lot of different companies. I think a lot— I think there's a lot of companies who skirt the rules already, right? Of course.

I mean, because most of these companies are hiring independent contractors so they don't have to pay them insurance.

So let's give you— let's give you a good another example. Let's say— let's say I owned a catering company, okay? And then I need— wait, I need 50 waiters on Saturday night. Yes. So essentially, are they employees or are they independent contractors? They're definitely employees. Why? Because I'm telling them what time to be there, how to dress, where to go, and all that.

So, but now, if you were hiring a chef to cook that night, then maybe that would be an independent contractor.

No, but I'm telling them what to cook, when to cook it, when to come in. So is that part— that's what I'm saying.

That's a, that's a real gray area, bro.

That's what I'm saying. All of that's a gray area.

But because I I would contest to the fact that if you call me and you hired me as a, as a personal chef or maybe your chef to cook for your event, I'm an independent contractor.

No, you called me and you said, but if you were a company and you called me, am I an independent contractor? If you just own a house and you go, hey, Allen, can you come over and cook me some dinner? You're an independent contractor. But because you're just calling me up, I'm doing it myself. But if I— a company hires me That's what they're trying to say. They're saying that a lot of companies—

the company is hiring independent contractors.

That's right. It's— yeah, it's going to affect a lot of businesses. I don't know how they're going to police it, but apparently—

because one major group of people that I think about right there is like developers, right? Because a lot of major companies— I mean, Google, Meta, right? They keep going on and on and on. Most of the developers that I know that work for these companies, they don't necessarily work for Netflix, or— right, they're an independent contractor. They're hired to fix a problem, or—

yeah, but that's different. They're hired to fix— they're hired to fix a problem. So they say, oh, here's a problem, how much will you charge me to fix it? You tell them, okay, it's $30,000. $30,000, it'll take 6 weeks. Whatever it is. It'll take 3 days, whatever it is. Then it's up to you to get— to get the— to get the job done.

But I said this, we're independent contractors, right?

But they're not telling you where to do it.

No, they are.

Oh, well, you still—

they go to work scheduled 9 to 5.

Well, then that's a problem, right?

I mean, that's— but that's the huge— these are huge companies doing that.

Yeah, well, they're going to come under scrutiny, just like—

sure, they are—

Uber, Lyft, even these places, other places. There's Tons and tons of delivery drivers out there. So let's go on to number 2. SBA proposes expanding its lender network. Now, at the same time, they put this information out before you go in there, right?

What the—

yeah, the SBA is the Small Business Association.

Okay. Expanding its lender network. First of all, what is a lender network and why does that even matter?

Okay, so the lender network typically for the SBA is the banks, right? And they ran into a problem, which is like your Chase, Bank of America, Truist, Wells Fargo, etc. Those are the banks. So they were the lender, the main lender network for all SBA products. You want an SBA loan, you go through your bank. Got it.

They work with the SBA, approves these banks. They have their own group of banks that they know.

Every bank pretty much can get it in on the SBA.

Okay.

And then the SBA guarantees part of the loan, right? So back to the bank, right? So if the loan fails, they got to cut— the government's got to cover it. Got it. There's a lot of restrictions people don't realize. They're signing liens on their business, their home, other assets, equipment that they use for their business. Paperwork before you sign for the SBA loan. Yeah. So the other— so what happened was we came into the pandemic, all of a sudden you need thousands and thousands and thousands of businesses need a PPP loan, right? They need these, uh, employee retention credit, uh, paycheck protection— Paycheck Protection Program, right? PPP. And with that, there's tons of fraud going on now. They just arrested some guys down here in South Florida that scammed millions of dollars. And the sad part is they scammed millions, and the business owners who got that money They got scammed out of like 20-30% commissions, and the business owners are gonna have to pay that money back, right? And some of them don't have the money. They're going to go to jail. So it was a whole list of a bunch of people all going to jail.

Well, you guys that did that, I mean, I feel sorry for you, but I don't.

But some people were stupid and like let somebody overstate their— they let them turn in fake paperwork. They were in on it. Yeah. So they're in trouble.

That list of businesses that you just said, they knew what they were doing.

Some of them did. Some of them did not know that the person— they didn't know that the people falsified the paperwork until they had to do the forgiveness. And then when they had to send in the paperwork, that's when they got their pants pulled down.

They're like, well, you didn't— this isn't—

you got $100,000. You only qualify for $30,000. We want $70,000 back. So the $70 grand's gone, plus you gave some guy $30 grand commission, right? So you didn't even get the whole thing.

You are in serious trouble.

There's, there's quite a list of a lot of people in serious trouble. And that's— so the— so then what the government did is they said, oh, let's go to all these fintech companies. Cabbage, On Deck, this one, that one. I forget all the names of them. One was called Blue something. It was a whole, a whole long list of funding stuff. No, no, company like these fintech loan companies like that. Oh yeah, Cabbage. So they went to those and then Cabbage after the pandemic got acquired by American Express. But Cat, there are a bunch of them are in lawsuits for the loans and not properly filing for them. And some people said didn't get the money. But the government says they got the money, but Cabbage never gave them the money. There's— Cabbage is involved in a bunch of lawsuits right now.

Cabbage was cool back in the day, like they were helping a lot of nonprofits.

They were helping a lot of businesses.

What happened? I don't know. I don't know. CEO? No.

A lot of that stuff happened before American Express bought them.

Really?

So now the SBA wants to expand all this to non-bank companies.. But then, you know, pops up— who pops up? The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And they say they're proposing that there's a registry of these companies because there's court judgments and legal proceedings against mortgage companies, payday loan providers, a whole bunch of non-bank finance entities. And the public needs to know who these people are. And another thing that they're saying is that all these companies, these non-bank fintech companies, right, because what they're saying is, is they need to all, um, submit to an audit. That audit has to be done before the first quarter of 2023, and they have to submit to an audit. But a whole bunch of that, that includes all the buy now pay later companies, all you know, every kind of company that's dealing with finance.

Yeah, this non-compete thing is—

well, let's just finish up this to the— let's finish up the loan thing. The other thing that happened in this loan thing is another article came out this morning and they're like, businesses beware. What are they supposed to beware of? You should not be leaving your money in PayPal, Square, Stripe. Venmo, da da da da da da da da da. Why? Those companies are not FDIC insured and they're not even audited. So if something, something happened, your money can just disappear and then you're done. All your money's gone. So they say maybe you can leave like a negligible amount of funds there. You shouldn't be leaving money on these platforms. Platforms. And there's— forget, that's just a few that we named off. There's hundreds. No, right? So they're saying that all these companies are required now to submit to these audits, and everything needs to be audited to find out how much money are they actually holding. Are people using them as a bank? Yeah. And that maybe is not being reported. Like, man, I can— income's not being—

I know some kids that have like their entire life savings on PayPal.

Well, they should be getting it off of there.

I tell them that all the time because it's a It's a huge problem.

A whole article came out this morning about it. I was in shock when I read it.

And they're co-mingling funds, like, because people use it for personal, but really, yeah, it's a business.

Rocky.

Hey, Rocco.

Rocky, that's just right. No, it's Camille.

Why are you doing that?

Uh-oh.

Rocky the guard dog, man.

Rocky's guarding us today. Like, oh, don't mess with the podcast crew.

Sheesh.

So now let's get to this thing. Federal Trade Commission, the FTC. You know, it's a lot of 3-letter and 4-letter.

The alphabet boys are out.

The alphabet is out to get us today. It's out. It's after small business. The alphabet is after small business. That should be the title of the podcast.

The alphabet.

The alphabet. The Alphabet— the Alphabet comes for small businesses, but then we don't want to confuse that with Google because they're also Alphabet. Yeah, so the Federal Trade Commission proposes broadly banning non-competence. They already did it because it's already like on the whole thing. They're saying the final version is not published yet. When it's published The, the FTC is looking for— after they publish this, it's going to go into effect in 180 days, and they're putting it into effect this year. What they want to do is they said this rule will affect over 30 million workers, with the FTC saying such agreements restrict the workers' ability in their industry for a certain amount of time or certain geographic location, and exploited, are exploitative, yeah, and violate the federal trade competition. Now we have a, you know, like, we have independent contractors, but we don't, we, we, we don't have like a non-compete that says all that. Our non-compete just says you signed up 20 customers with us, right? So, you know, you have to compare it to something. Signed up 20 customers, you can't just take the customers and you know, you don't want to work, you've got it, you found a better place to put that.

Maybe, right?

You can't just take the 20 customers from Company A, switch them over to Company B, right? Okay, now as long as that's protected, that's fine. Because I don't think I should be— I should— if someone says, oh, I don't want to sell for you anymore, I don't want to, I don't care, they can go out and sell. Right, go sell right down the street. Fine with me, go right ahead. They probably do anyway because they're not competing.

I get it. Like, you know, I mean, I don't feel kind of messed up though.

No, but I don't think they should be able to restrict geographic location, right, and industry, right? You want to be in the same industry, fine. But, but at the same time, the worker has to understand, like, oh, you have trade secrets. You know who the customers are. You can't be giving that information out, right?

Like we talked about, like when Jimmy John's has that, they make you sign for the recipes.

The recipes? Yeah. Oh, the secret tuna.

That's secret tuna recipe.

Don't tell me what's in it. Don't tell us on the podcast what's in the secret tuna. What are you gonna do? Is it secret? No. Okay, probably it's mayo, salt, pepper. Maybe there's some secret Jimmy John's.

There's one extra ingredient that you will not think about. Okay, you are extremely hot.

Tabasco? Soy sauce? I've seen people put that in there, in their tuna. So yeah, I mean, I mean, I was a chef.

Come on, why the hell would you add soy sauce after you put salt in?

Because they probably gives a little—

it does give it a little ting.

Yeah, it gets a little thing, a little ting ting. Yeah, so that's interesting for your pasta. Special sauce at McDonald's is basically Thousand Island.

Yeah, no, exactly. It's like the Big Mac sauce or the Whopper, whatever though. I don't know, the Big Mac, that's what it was.

Yeah, it's like that. It's similar to Thousand Island. Maybe it's got something else in it.

I think it's got a little more like— I think it's It's just a little bit more spicy.

Now, when I was in the hotel—

spicy.

So I'm gonna tell you, when I was in the hotel business—

why so spicy?

We wanted to make sure like everything was the same, right? Because we actually went to this like spice company and said to them, oh, this is how we're going to make our tomato sauce, blah blah blah blah blah. We measured out everything— the granulated garlic, the basil, the thyme, the oregano, the, the everything, all the salt, the pepper. And then we had them make a mixture in a bag, and that bag was good for, you know, 6 cans of tomato product, another can of this, another can of that, right? And that was the recipe. And then you needed one spice bag. Nobody knew what was in the spice bag because they wanted it all to taste the same. So companies can do that, you know, they want to keep stuff a secret, that's the way you do it.

Yeah, yeah.

And we, we did that. We had seasoning for the grill. We had all, you know, some stuff I used to just mix it up myself. I had my own recipe. I wanted them to season like all the burgers and the chicken and the steaks with a special seasoning. So I made it all. I would make a huge batch of it, right? And then I had it in a big huge containers. Now when they needed it, they poured it into the shakers that they would There you go. Put on everything.

So I'm waiting spaghetti tonight.

You're making spaghetti tonight? You know, I had— I actually need to take some ground beef out and make some meatballs because I did buy some zucchini and I have one of those machines. I can make those zucchini wheels, zucchini, uh, noodles.

Hello everyone, we'd like to take this time to thank our sponsors Nationwide Payment Systems and NPS Printer. We'd also like to shout out the listeners and everyone that subscribed to our YouTube channel. Thank you for tuning in. If you'd like to reach Allen or myself, head over to B2BVault.info where you'll find two forms, one to contact us and another if you're interested in becoming a sponsor. If you'd like to sign up for a merchant account, click the Apply Now button located at the top of the page of B2BVault.info. Where you'll answer a few questions, and you'll be on your way to processing payments in no time. The podcast is available on Spotify, iTunes, Pandora, and other popular streaming networks. Thanks again for listening.

So this, this, this non-compete thing could turn into a big, big, big, big nightmare for big business.

I mean, imagine all like You know, like a big business.

You work for a bank, they make you sign a non-compete, then say, oh, well, Justin, you can't work for another bank in South Florida for 2 years. For 2 years.

That's ridiculous, right?

I don't think that should be allowed. No, but I think a lot of states have rules that you can't enforce.

Like, so, Florida, I mean, like we were just saying, like recipe— like if you're working for some sort of, like, I don't know, like a process, a company that has a certain process, like a logistic company or something, who like has like a stranglehold on just this one way of doing it. I could see the sense of you signing.

You don't want them to sign— well, you know, they're not just signing an NDA, they're signing that says you can't reveal company secrets. That too, right? So everybody signs that that works here. They can't reveal any company secrets, lists, everything.

Found in the— no, you won't get found because there's too many alligators down out here.

Here, listen, you know, get tripping out into the Everglades. Everglades, lefty-o's. Just don't bring your cell phone with you because that's how they caught the guy in Idaho, following his cell phone signal around. So don't take your cell phone out to the Everglades.

That was maybe spit, bro.

So number 4, the Treasury Department final rule would require detailed business ownership information. Now, I don't have a problem with this, but what, what, what basically they're addressing— so we can explain it to everybody—

would it be public though?

Um, I don't know that. Well, you know, I guess that's state by state, because you go to Sunbiz and yeah, I can find your blood type. I mean, it's all there. You business, everything is there. It's no secret. I mean, you can find pretty much anybody's federal tax ID number, forget Sundays, on Google. But they're talking about, you know, you know, they're putting all sorts of exemptions in there and all that. But they're— part of this comes from the issues they had with the payment, the Paycheck Protection Program, with fraud. They also had a problem where there's people that there's like shell companies. So like Company A owns Company B, and then Company B owns Company C, and then Company A, you know, off to the side is some company with the actual real owners in it. And we've had problems with that before where we signed up some huge company and there's a holding company and a trust. And this and that. And we were like, listen, this rule is pretty weird. And there's some exemptions in it.

This rule is really weird.

Yeah, I don't know how they're going to enforce that, but they're gonna—

the way that they're explaining is it's very convoluted, right? The way they explain exemptions to the rule include larger operating companies with 20 or more full-time employees and more than $5 million in revenue and physical operating presence in the United States along with company. Yeah, this is just weird, right?

But the, but the problem is, is the small companies, that's where stuff is going on, where, because they might have like no employees that work for an entity, but the entity actually is the one getting the business revenue, right?

The Small Business Association said that this, uh, new rule, they're going to challenge on the state's powers over the formation of businesses.

Yeah, that's why, that's why I was saying a lot of the rules that they're coming up with here, like the, like the, these independent contractors, the independent contractor rule, the Florida has non-compete thing, right? But I'm just saying, like, the Florida has rules against a lot of that stuff. So I don't know how this stuff is going to override the state rules.

The only good rule I see in here is expanding the lender network.

Yeah, but they're having problems with that too, because there's companies that are unscrupulous that are involved in that. And how are they going to do that? Only by making them all submit to audits. And then once they're audited and then they're approved, then they can be part of it. But they're not. It's just not very organized. I mean, listen, me and you, we could go in there and organize the government in a couple of days. Look at the movie Dave. Two guys, Dave, the guy sat down who I forgot, the actor Paxton, Bill Paxton, and Charles Grodin was the accountant. They sat down and they figured out how to fix the government in a few hours. Listen, the government is very wasteful. I mean, I listen to some of the stuff on C-SPAN. These guys are up making all these speeches. They're talking about why are we giving money for this? Why are we giving money for a trail? Why are we giving money for some fishing thing and this and that? You know, just like a lot of craziness, pet projects, stuff. You know, it's a little nuts.

$3.5 billion for the Everglades is a good thing, though.

Yes, but that's coming from the state of Florida, most of that money, right? That's right. But it's not coming from the federal government.

That's true.

Okay, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, you're right. So then they have this immigration services fee for businesses. So this, this thing I'm fine with. They're talking about, you know, they have a $1.8 billion budget shortfall. They've been charging people like $30 to $50 for you to import a guy from India to be your program.

You're only going to increase it to $30. And no, while many increases are in the $30 to $50 range, petition fees for some categories of workers would more than double, with some increases topping $1,000.

Well, they should charge more than that. You want to bring people from— there's plenty of people without jobs here. Just employ everybody in the US and put— so this is—

so this, this rule is for people who live outside of the United States.

Yeah. And they want to bring them.

So Allen owns Nationwide Payment Systems. Justin lives in Germany. He wants to hire Justin?

No, and import them to the United States.

But specifically, what's the reasoning behind hiring someone from those?

I don't know, maybe that person works cheaper than people here. They're gonna— I'm gonna bring you over from Germany or India or wherever, Pakistan, Philippines, to the United States.

I also think that that sounds like slavery, but I don't know.

Well, the other thing is, is I think that they should have fees for companies. Let's say you're a company and let's say you laid off 100 workers. Now you got 100 workers doing the same job in the Philippines. I think they should tax that.

I think that that should be able to happen.

Well, no, I'm saying if you want to do it, it's okay, but you're going to pay taxes on it. So that makes it more expensive. So it makes it expensive.

It makes it so they have to rethink it at least, right?

So they have to rethink it. Makes it a little bit more expensive for you to do it. I mean, obviously.

So the Immigration Service fees—

I mean, there's stuff that they're—

I didn't even know this was a thing. Yeah, I mean, I knew you could sponsor people to be—

to get their green card, right?

Right. As far as like going to an extent of finding talent overseas. Yeah, paying for them to travel, and you're like, what do you— I don't know, that sounds like a ridiculous amount of money, the initial price.

I have no idea why people do it, but apparently they're trying to put a stop to it. I think there's a lot worse things, like the offshoring of workers that's going on now. Like, you call up American Express and they answer the phone and in another country.

New Guinea?

Well, I don't know where they answer the phone.

I don't know. I don't—

yes, I mean, it's like I watch these videos that these guys have on YouTube and they're, you know, they like stop these— how about spend some money and stop all these scam artists that are running, that have 10,000 employees in a building somewhere in India? Like, how come the United States doesn't say to the Indian government, hey, we know where these guys are, it's on YouTube? There's a guy on YouTube, Mark the Glitter Bomb Guy, right? He's got videos of these places he broke into. He broke their security and he got in, and he's on their camera system and can see all the workers there. He actually calls the workers, right? And then he mails them like glitter bombs and fart bombs and all kinds of stuff, right? But I'm just saying, they deserve it because they scam people out of money. I heard a story about somebody getting scammed out of $20 grand the other day because they thought that they were going to go to mail. And what— the part that I didn't like, the person bought all these gift cards, put them in a FedEx, and then they mailed it to somebody, right? And after they realized that they got scammed, yeah, called the cops, and the cops could not get the package from FedEx. I don't agree with that. I would have went to the address myself and waited for the FedEx. I would have just sat there waiting for the FedEx. I don't know if it would—

they say that— I thought FedEx can't do that anymore.

Can't do what? Give you the package? Well, they should. If you call the cops, I think FedEx and UPS and the post office should give the person the package back. Yeah, I agree. If you call the cops. But, you know, whatever. They don't address everything. Like, why not just pass the Safe Banking Act and tax, tax all these cannabis businesses so we can pay for the billions of dollars going to Ukraine or whatever. So pay for whatever you got going on. So now here's the last one is—

well, you forgot one.

Oh, which one is that? Oh, tighter regulations. Oh yeah, here we go. Oops. The tighter regulations on venture funds, fund managers, and others Now this definitely has to be done because I think all of these companies, these all, all, all of these companies need to number one get audited. Yeah, they need to file audits, right? And they need to be following all these Truth in Lending laws and everything else that they're supposed to think because they're having this problem. They want to prohibit private fund advisors and affiliates from limiting their liability for breach of fiduciary duty, which means them telling the truth. So like, if they go lose all your money and they lied to you, you can't really sue them. And I think that's BS. Investors should be able to sue these people.

But like, can people sue FTX?

Yeah, they could try. They're not gonna pay me. Well, who knows? They're finding money everywhere, but and assets and real estate. And the guy's still out of jail. And the guy's still out of jail. And I don't even know how they let the guy out of jail because he got his bond, right, on a house that he took with ill-gotten funds.

And then they let him—

then they let him take out like almost a million dollars for lawyer fees, right? That's ridiculous. Why should we pay his— he should pay his lawyer fees out of ill-gotten No, that's all wrong. There's something wrong with that.

And the last but not least, the talk of the town for the past, I don't know, let's say 8 months, probably for like, I mean, I guess for the last year. Yeah, last year, the IRS and the $600 thing. What's happening?

Well, that's on hold. They are going to keep the threshold at $20,000 and 200 transactions. So that means if you're using PayPal, Venmo, Cash App, etc., etc., etc., now I think it's combined. So not per—

it's not $200 per platform, it's $200 total, total, right?

It's $200 total. You go over $20,000, which is nothing, right? You're operating a business and you need to declare taxes. So if you're not doing that, you need to get with it. So they're not going to go after all this small stuff for $600.

Thank God.

And we can thank the House of Representatives because they defunded the 87,000 new IRS workers that they were going to hire, which was going to go after basically small businesses, even though they said it was for millionaires, which I knew where it was going after, right? But I'm saying I'm laughing. There's not even 87,000 millionaires. So people, people don't understand. They talk about this all the time. Oh, the top. The top earners are not paying taxes, right? The top earners aren't paying taxes.

That's what they say.

Okay, so they audited Donald Trump, right? So what did they find? He followed the rules. Yeah, that's what they said. They said he followed the IRS rules. Good. He followed them. He did. And he did pay like one, one year while he was president because he had to sell off a bunch of stuff. He paid like $24 million in taxes. He was probably the only person to go in office and come out poor. The only one, huh? That's what they say.

I don't say anything, huh? I didn't say anything.

Okay, no, I'm just saying that's what they say. But, uh, but this, you know, you know, they're saying, you know, they're saying this, this is a confusing rule and all that. And freelancers are receiving money, but also people use it for personal payments. And I think that these platforms have done some self-policing and they need to do more. And they need to say, determine like, hey, you're a business. You're not— this isn't personal. This isn't you just giving some money to somebody. This is personal. You got to pay that. You got to be on a business account, not a personal person. Right. It's not personal. You need to be on a business account. You're doing a lot of transactions. Let me tell you, I've seen— like, I went into a few businesses during the pandemic and that whole list, oh, pay by Chime, pay by Venmo, pay by PayPal, pay by Zelle, pay by this, pay by that, with a list of phone numbers, all different phone numbers, right? However, why that was, I don't know. You know, maybe it was the same phone number. Whatever. And so that, you know, but now I started to see that disappear a little bit, and, um, people are gonna have a big surprise.

I mean, Zelle for sure, they made a huge— they made a big pivot last year around, I don't know, beginning of the year. They, they started that thing with small businesses.

Well, they have that small business account, they charge you 1%.

Yeah, they sell them, they But they changed that like what, last year, right?

Yeah, last year. No, but they also— they give small businesses the ability to send money, but you can't receive money. There's no receiving, it's just sending. You cannot receive money because receive money is going to your phone number. Phone number is associated to your personal account, right? So you can't send money because it's got to be a cell phone. So that's, that's dumb.

They figured that out for rent too, right?

For rent?

Yeah.

Yeah, well, if people are paying rent, then those landlords need to be paying taxes. And they, they, you know, I've read that a lot of these companies switched people over, said, oh, you have to have a business account now.

Yeah, Zelle, man, they did that.

Yeah, to everybody. Yeah, they made people— oh, this, you have to get a business.

Well, not everybody.

They did me? Well, they did, you know, they have to, you know, they got to per— they got to do what they need to do. And, you know, they should follow the rules like the other, like, credit card processors have to do and send everybody out a 1099-K for what they receive so they can pay taxes.

You got some bonus— you said you wanted to talk about something else. He had a bonus, uh, topic to talk about.

This— what was the bonus topic?

You had it printed up.

Well, no, that's what I was talking about, how they want to have this this Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wants all these companies to be in a registry. Oh, so all the non-bank companies— that's what I'm saying. Like, one organization is saying one thing, right? So on that, so we'll go back to the SBA as it's saying, let's expand the lending network. And then the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is saying, hey, Oh yeah, we want to— that's fine, but as long as everybody's registered. And then also this consumer— and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is saying that all these companies need to have an audit, along with FinCEN saying the same thing. And then the SEC is weighing in on that too. So that's a very, very hot topic where the alphabet— every alphabet is watching what's going on. Because, you know, this PPP thing had millions of dollars of fraud, you know, millions and millions of dollars. I can't even tell you. Every week there's another person getting arrested in South Florida for scamming PPP.

You're not lying. Every guy I go to his house was crazy. Did you see that guy's house?

Which one? The one in Coral Springs? Oh yeah. And he's not the— and he's not the first guy. It's whatever they arrested They arrested a bunch of people. They arrested a whole bunch, a whole slew of people every week. Every week or every 2 weeks I see another article.

Once a month there's someone getting their house raided, their cars repossessed.

Yeah, one guy was out in South Beach, was driving around in a, in a Ferrari, right? Yeah, whatever, some super expensive Ferrari. And they arrested him. He scammed, what, a few million from PPP? He didn't even have a business. Then they arrested another guy who didn't have a business. They got like a half a million dollars in PPP and bought a house.

Yeah, there's another woman from down here who— she got like, I don't know, she almost a billion.

Yeah, that's crazy. But the thing is, she got— they get money, right? Then that was their commission. And then the business, the poor business owner— like, I know a guy He got like $500 grand in PPP money. Then after he got the money, they came knocking on his door. They go, hey, this doesn't add up. You have like 3 employees, right? You got to give this money back. And then the guy goes to tell them, oh, I had this loan guy do the paperwork and he got $100 grand out of the $500 grand. That guy was nowhere to be found. I don't even know if they arrested him yet, but they're looking for him. And there's a lot of that going on. I tell business owners, you want to get money, you want to get this employee retention credit, you got to talk to an accountant. Find an accounting company that does it for like a flat fee, whatever that flat fee is, and have them do it. Make sure you qualify, make sure you provide all the payroll records, make sure you're doing everything so that you don't get a knock on your door or find out you have some lien against your house because you overtook the money. Because that's one of the things when you get money from the SBA, they file— the first thing they do is file a lien on your business, right? And they file a lien on your house, and they want their money back when they— because if you give them the— you know, because once they get the correct information, right, they go, you got too much money. That's crazy. So make sure you're using somebody that's doing it all correctly. They're using your payroll records, they're using your bank records, they're not manipulating anything. It's a reputable company. Don't use companies that just popped up or they do something else or they're a non-financial company. I mean, let me tell you, every day I, I read about Buy Now Pay Later.

It's like— I was about to sneeze, I'm sorry.

Oh, so I read like, oh, it's been a savior for some businesses who weren't able to make sales and that saved their business offering buy now pay later. And then you read another article that says, oh, the buy now pay later companies are ripping people off because they're not educating the consumer right, they're not, they're not explaining to them the rules.

That could be true.

No, because they said they were already like taken down by the the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau saying that they broke truth in lending laws. So all of that, you got to make sure that the company you're dealing with, that you understand what the terms and conditions are when you're borrowing money.

Absolutely.

And go to a reputable source for these things, like an accountant. Not every accountant wants to do it because it's a lot of work for just a tiny bit of money. Right? And the guys who are charging 20, 30% do not use those because they will overstate your, your, you know, what you have. They might even manipulate your paperwork so that they can get a big payday, and then they're going to disappear. And then you'll read about them in the newspaper.

They're going to disappear, all right.

No, but then you'll see them on the news. They're getting arrested. Yeah, the one guy left the state, one of the guys in that ring. And they went and found him somewhere in some other state where the guy bought a big house and everything, whatever. And eventually the government will sell all their assets. Yeah, get them— get their money back and throw them in the can, hopefully. So that's today's podcast. These are important things. Let's just go down the list real quick. Be careful with, you know, using these payment services. Look at your independent contractor contracts. Look at who you borrow money from, right? And the, you know, non-compete agreements, which goes along with independent contractor agreements— make sure you're reviewing those so that you're not, you're not overstepping your boundaries. And make sure all your, make sure all your, uh business information is correct wherever it's listed. And, you know, make the same thing with venture funds and all that. Make sure any financial company that you're dealing with is a registered company, and that way you know that their, their feet are held to the fire and they're doing everything legally. They're not doing stuff, you know, don't deal with, you know, ABC guy trading your stocks, you know, setting up your stock fund, and you don't know what they're doing. You know, don't hire that guy. No, I'm saying go to Charles Schwab. Maybe it's a little more money, but you're safer. Same thing like we talked about. Don't leave your money in these non-bank companies.

Yeah, don't do that.

Do not do that. That's very bad. So these are all things you got to stay on top of for 2023 going into 2024. It's very important. Small business owners, medium-sized business owners, there you have it. What do you— what do you have to say, Justin?

Pay attention to what he's saying because he's telling you what you should be looking out for. There's a bunch of stuff changing in 2023. B2B Vault is for business owners so that we can educate you on things that are happening with not just payment processing but in small business news, entrepreneurship, and keeping your business, you know, afloat.

We're for the small and medium-sized business owner. Solidarity. Peace.

Peace out.

Carpe diem. Have a great day.