Making Sure Your Small Business Complies With the Law

When you set up your own small business, you take on a whole lot of responsibility, and it’s extremely important that you live up to everything that is expected of you. Not only do you have to look out for yourself, but you also have to look out for the consumers who purchase your products and the employees who help to build your dreams. The law is in place to ensure that you do this. Here are a few areas to focus on!

Developing High-Quality Products

If you are providing the consumer market with tangible goods, you have to ensure that these goods are of sufficient quality to comply with product and consumer safety laws. In order to avoid issues with the Consumer Products Safety Commission (or the CPSC), you should collaborate with lawyers at Aitken Aitken Cohn, who will be able to familiarise you with product liability.

Understanding Employment Law

While you may start out running your business alone, you are likely to take on a team of employees as you begin to grow and expand. These individuals will form the backbone of your business and can take care of all sorts of different tasks on your behalf – from administrative tasks to IT, customer service, product development, and marketing. However, when taking on staff, you need to understand employment law and ensure that you comply with it. Areas within employment law include:

• Employment Diversity
• Employee Contracts
• Working Hours
• Minimum Wage
• Equal Pay
• Parental Leave
• Dismissal
• Redundancy

Complying With Health and Safety Regulations

Health and safety is an area that applies to consumers and employees alike. When people spend time on your commercial property, their health and safety needs to remain at the forefront of your mind. Ensuring that your commercial property adheres to health and safety regulations will minimise risk for consumers and employees, as well as reduce the number of incidents such as injury or illness that occur as a result of people spending time or operating within your commercial premises. Not only will this protect customers and employees, but it will protect you too! If you don’t slip up, you won’t have to fork out huge amounts of compensation through court cases and claims.

Filing Tax Returns

At the end of each fiscal year, you legally have to file a tax return. This can be a long, dull, and drawn out process. But it’s important that you get it done in time in order to maintain a good public reputation and to avoid fines, fees, and criminal action. Generally speaking, it is best to hire an accountant to help you with this process.

These are just a few ways that you can ensure your small business complies with the law to get the ball rolling in the right direction!