The BULL

Table of Contents

• Stop making these HR mistakes in 2026

• No Tax on Tips” Is Here. But Don’t Get Cute With I …

• Is Your Business Ready for Pay Transparency?

• Ignoring This HR Platform Is Not a Bold Strategy

Stop making these HR mistakes in 2026

After working with hundreds of small businesses, we’ve seen the same patterns repeat: informal decisions, missing documentation, “figure it out” management styles, all quietly snowballing into real risk, real cost, and very real headaches.

Inside our latest blog, we break down the most common HR missteps, including:

• The “we’ve always done it this way” trap

• Why undocumented conversations come back to haunt you

• The surprisingly expensive gamble of misclassifying workers

• And the classic move: waiting until a small issue becomes a five-alarm fire

More importantly, we cover how to fix these issues before they turn into something you have to explain to a lawyer. Read the full blog here.

No Tax on Tips” Is Here. But Don’t Get Cute With It

On April 13, 2026, the U.S. Department of the Treasury and IRS finalized the “No Tax on Tips” rules under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), effective June 12, 2026. Translation: eligible employees earning up to $150,000 ($300,000 if married filing jointly) can deduct up to $25,000 in qualified tip income through 2028, but only if it’s properly reported. The rules span 70+ occupations, and “cash” includes cards and digital payments. However, not everything with a tip qualifies. Mandatory service charges (like automatic gratuities customers can’t adjust) do not count, no matter what you call them internally.

Here’s where this becomes your problem: if your payroll system isn’t accurately tracking and reporting tip income, your employees lose the deduction, and you inherit the compliance risk. If you’re not 100% confident your payroll setup can handle this cleanly, it’s worth a conversation and fixing it now is far easier than explaining it later.

Is Your Business Ready for Pay Transparency?

Pay transparency is no longer just a concern for large employers, but is quickly becoming a reality for small businesses as well. Shaped by evolving employee expectations, competitive hiring markets, and expanding regulations, the question isn’t if this will affect your business, but how prepared you are when it does?

Without a clear framework behind compensation decisions, businesses risk losing trust, increasing turnover, and facing potential legal exposure. We’ve outlined the key risks, common pitfalls, and a practical readiness checklist to help you get ahead of the curve.

Read the full blog here

Ignoring This HR Platform Is Not a Bold Strategy

We just rolled out an Audax HR Compliance (Zywave) platform designed to enhance our value to our HR Services we already provide by giving you with additional real-time HR guidance, resources, and tools. If you’re not using it yet, you’re leaving some valuable support (and frankly, risk reduction) on the table.

This new platform is an additional tool that will help your company stay ahead of compliance issues before they turn into problems. Our clients already using it are streamlining policies and spending less time second-guessing HR decisions. If you haven’t signed up yet, your access link may have expired. Reach out to our team, and we’ll get you set up quickly. Of course, we are always here to provide guidance to your organization, and this is not meant to replace that.