This standard establishes the compliance calendar: the single list of every recurring legal, tax, and regulatory deadline the Company owes, with its cadence, its due date, the role that owns it, and the consequence of missing it. A deadline that is not on the calendar is treated as a deadline that will be missed; every new registration, license, or filing obligation is added to the calendar in the week it is created.
Roles and duties
- The Legal function owns the calendar: it maintains the list, runs the quarterly review, and confirms that evidence of each completed filing is attached to its entry.
- The Managing Member owns the entity, licensing, domain, insurance, and franchise deadlines assigned to that role in the table below, and approves any change to who owns a deadline.
- The Tax Preparer owns the tax filing deadlines assigned to that role and notifies the Legal function the same week any filing cadence changes.
The calendar
| Obligation | Cadence | Typical due date | Owning role | If it slips |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tennessee annual report | Annual | April 1 | Managing Member | Penalties, then administrative dissolution; see Entity Records and Good Standing |
| Tennessee sales and use tax filing | As assigned by the Tennessee Department of Revenue (monthly, quarterly, or annual) | Per notice | Tax Preparer | Penalty and interest |
| Tennessee business tax return | Annual | Per notice | Tax Preparer | Penalty and interest |
| Other-state marketplace facilitator filings | Per state (monthly, quarterly, or annual) | Per state | Tax Preparer | Penalty and interest, per state |
| Form 1099 issuance for the Company's own reportable payments | Annual | January 31 to recipients | Tax Preparer | Internal Revenue Service penalties per form |
| Designated copyright agent registration | As required by the Copyright Office | Per registration | Legal function | Loss of eligibility for the DMCA safe harbor; see DMCA Agent Process |
| Business license renewals (Memphis and Shelby County) | Annual | Per license | Managing Member | Fines and stop-work exposure |
| Domain renewals, including aapawz.com | Annual or longer | Staggered | Managing Member | Redemption fees, then loss of the domain |
| Insurance renewals | Annual | Per policy | Managing Member | An uninsured gap |
| Franchise Disclosure Document annual update | Annual, within 120 days of fiscal year end | Per the FTC Franchise Rule | Managing Member | Franchises may not lawfully be offered on an out-of-date disclosure document |
The tax obligations behind the tax rows are governed by Tax Registrations and Reporting, and the filings that create new calendar rows are covered in Regulatory Filings and Registrations.
Procedure: keeping the calendar
- Keep one list. Deadlines are not divided among separate lists kept by different people.
- Give every deadline a 30-day warning and a 7-day warning. Tax filings require the longer warning because the Tax Preparer requires lead time.
- When a deadline is completed, attach the evidence to its entry: the filed return, the receipt, or the renewed certificate. "I think we filed" is not a record.
- Add a row in the same week any new registration, license, or filing obligation is created.
- Open every notice from a revenue department on the day it arrives. A notice that changes a filing cadence: for example, from quarterly to monthly as volume grows: updates the calendar in the same week.
Procedure: when a deadline is missed
- File or renew immediately. Penalties usually stop growing on the day of filing.
- Pay the penalty and record the payment against the calendar entry.
- Establish why the calendar failed: the deadline was missing from the list, or a warning was ignored. Correct the process, not only the instance.
- Check for consequences that follow from the miss. A missed annual report can affect good standing, which can in turn affect a state registration that required good standing; one miss can be three problems.
Records created and where they are kept
This standard creates the calendar itself, the evidence attached to each completed entry, records of penalties paid, and the notes of each quarterly review. The Legal function keeps them with the corporate records described in Entity Records and Good Standing, retained under Record Retention.
Escalation
A missed deadline, a notice of penalty or dissolution, or a filing cadence change that no role can absorb is escalated to the Legal function at legal@aapawz.com on the day it is identified.
Review cadence
The Legal function reviews the whole calendar once a quarter: what falls due in the next 90 days, what is new, and what has changed. This standard is reviewed at the same quarterly review.
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