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The heat was rising on legislative, regulatory and compliance issues for the insights industry in June, as the Insights Association focused on: federal privacy legislation; pending compliance hurdles as new state and federal laws took effect; a new AI law in Colorado; and a federal bill that would require tax withholding for research subjects receiving participant incentives.

While temperatures are starting to dip, concerns still simmered in September for the insights industry as we dealt with more new state privacy laws, burgeoning regulation of AI, and other pressing advocacy issues.

Privacy legislation and regulation kicked into gear during February at the state and federal level. The feds are proposing to prohibit all non-compete agreements, and changes are on the table for Kentucky’s new tax on insights services. That is just a taste of what’s been happening this past month in advocacy impacting the insights industry.

They say nothing is certain in this life but death and taxes. We’ll need to revise that axiom a bit after a favorable outcome was announced last month for an Insights Association member company in its legal battle against the Texas state comptroller, who sought to collect sales tax on research services.

Texas governor, Rick Perry, has signed a new health bill, H.B. 300, into law that enforces new obligations in addition to the requirements of the HIPAA privacy rule. The law, which becomes effective September 1, 2012, provides an expansive definition of a covered entity and is likely to include non-covered entities under HIPAA, including survey researchers.