Scamming, phishing, pharming, vishing -- people in the business world are well aware that hackers and other fraudsters have developed a myriad of schemes designed to obtain sensitive personal information and money. Every year, these schemes cause businesses to suffer significant financial losses. The FBI estimates that in 2020 business email...
City of Milwaukee Property Tax Notice of Assessment Objection/Appeal Deadline – May 16, 2022.
The City of Milwaukee has sent its 2022 “Notice of Assessed Value – Real Property” to all City of Milwaukee property owners. Almost every year the City revalues properties, which is the case again for 2022 after having performed a maintenance assessment for 2021. The recently released 2022 assessments are effective as of January 1, 2022, and...
The Importance of LLC Operating Agreements
Many people dream of one day starting their own business, the attraction of doing so being unique to the individual. For some, the notion of being their own boss is sufficient to cause them to start looking at prospective office spaces. For others convinced by visions of the business quickly becoming wildly successful, the claim to a...

What’s Next for Employers: OSHA’s Vaccine and Testing Mandate
On Tuesday, November 16, 2021, litigation pending in several federal circuits regarding the federal vaccine/testing mandate described below was consolidated in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Below, we summarize the mandate, discuss the various court developments, and provide guidance as to steps employers could take while the...

Inflation is Back, Should You Consider Consumer Price Index (CPI) Rent Increases in Your Leases?
The Consumer Price Index (or CPI) is a set of indexes generated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) that measures “the prices paid by urban consumers for a representative basket of goods and services.” Historically, CPI has been used in commercial real estate leases and ground leases “escalation clauses” or “index clauses” in an attempt to...

Capping 1031 Exchanges Would Cripple Wisconsin’s Commercial Real Estate Economy and Farmers
An essential tool in the rebuilding of our American economy is at serious risk as part of the $1.8 trillion American Families Plan being considered in Washington – and the damage will be felt in every state, city and town still reeling from the ravages of COVID-19. For the last 100 years, like-kind exchanges, which allow investors to defer taxes...

Section 1031 Tax Deferred Exchanges: Implications of the Biden Proposal
On April 28th, 2021, President Biden revealed a slew of tax proposals. One of these proposals involved curtailing the use of a long-standing planning tool -- the Tax Deferred Like-Kind Exchange. Flowing from Section 1031 of the Internal Revenue Code, Section 1031 exchanges are a key component of the investment real estate market, especially for...

Don’t Let Your Supply Chain Run Aground
By: Timothy J. Feldhausen On March 23, 2021, the container vessel Ever Given, one of the largest container ships in the world, grounded in the Suez Canal for nearly 5 days, blocking traffic through one of the busiest and most important commercial sea lanes in the entire world. The cost of this single incident is being measured in billions of...

Considerations for Commercial Tenants for Negotiating Lease Modifications or Contemplating Lease Terminations
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues its grip on the country and appears to be entering a surge phase this winter, many commercial tenants are dealing with the uncertainty of the prolonged effect of both restrictive public health measures employed by local and state governments to combat the virus’ spread and also a general reduction in economic...

CDC Announces New Residential Eviction Moratorium Order Through End of 2020
By: Ethan C. Geis and Michael Van Someren On September 1, 2020, the United States Department of Health and Human Services through the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced it was issuing a nationwide order temporarily halting certain residential evictions. (Order). The Order became effective beginning September 4, 2020 through...