Good news greeted America's corporate leaders this morning. After months of relentless bickering, Democrats and Republicans reached a down-to-the-wire agreement to avert the so-called fiscal cliff, a conflagration of tax hikes and deep, across-the-board government spending cuts.

The bad news, however, concerns what wasn't included in the deal and the missing pieces that assure continued wall-to-wall media coverage and repetitive talking heads. Beyond those broad sound bites is also the matter how, from operational and regulatory perspectives, those omissions may affect businesses.

Here is what's in the deal brokered by Congress late Tuesday:

Taxes will rise for individuals earning $400,000 a year, and couples earning $450,000 or more. Below that threshold, the so-called Bush-era tax cuts will be made permanent. Those folks deemed as high income families will also face increased taxes on capital gains and dividends, jumping from 15 percent to 20 percent. Personal exemptions will also be phased out and itemized deductions limited for individuals making over $250,000 and households above $300,000.

Grocery bills will not spike thanks to a nine month extension of the farm bill, which includes government subsidies and price-setting on commodities like milk and sugar.

A year-long extension of unemployment benefits.

A $5 million exemption threshold for the estate tax, which rises from 35 percent to 40 percent.

A 27 percent reduction in the payments made to doctors through Medicare was postponed.

The Alternative Minimum Tax will now be indexed to inflation, a “fix” needed to prevent increases on high-income earners from trickling down to middle class families.

Extensions of family-related tax breaks like the American Opportunity Tax Credit, Earned Income Tax Credit, and Child Tax Credit, as well as business-related “tax extenders,” breaks for expenses such as research and development, site improvements and other investments. Alternative energy tax breaks are renewed, as are economic incentives for such esoteric ventures as film and television production, automobile racetracks and rum produced I the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

What wasn't included in the deal:

Specific slashing of government spending, with the deep, automatic spending cuts imposed as part of Congress' "sequester" mandate delayed for two months. As part of the Budget Control Act's mandate to reduce government spending $2.4 trillion by 2014, an automatic 9.4 percent cut in defense spending and an 8.2 percent cut across non-defense programs were set to be triggered on Jan. 2 unless a new budget deal was reached.

Consensus on raising the debt ceiling, a contentious issue last year that led to a downgrade of the nation's credit rating.

Extension of a 2 percent payroll-tax cut.

Reducing spending on entitlement programs.

In anticipation of both the impasse and eventual tax increases, numerous companies already executed fiscal cliff strategies, many of which included accelerated dividend payments and bonuses.With Congress merely punting sequestration cuts, more companies can also be expected to treat lingering federal budget concerns as a risk factor in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

A recent analysis by financial news website Minyanville found that the number of SEC filings containing the phrase "fiscal cliff” grew, on average, 125% a month throughout the second half of 2012. On December 6 49 documents referencing it were filed. Notably, defense contractors have flagged the damage military spending cuts would incur in their 10-K filings.

Pre-IPO companies have also cited tax hits and budget cuts among the risk factors they detail in Form S-1 registration filings with the SEC.

A filing by SeaWorld on Dec. 27, for example, looked at “various factors beyond our control that could adversely affect attendance figures… and guest spending patterns.”  The fiscal cliff's potential erosion of consumer confidence and drain on disposable income were cited, along with such dire matters as “outbreaks of pandemic or contagious diseases.”

Financial regulators are also in the cross-hairs of still-on-the-table sequestration cuts, which would mean fewer staff and resources for enforcement, rulemaking, and guidance. The molasses drip of Dodd-Frank Act rules could trickle even slower as more immediate matters demand focus.

In an Oct. 9 letter to his colleagues on the House Committee on Appropriations, Rep. Norman Dicks (D-Wash.) outlined the likely fallout of automatic cuts.

His estimate was that the SEC would reduce personnel by roughly 235 full-time employees. “This reduction would force major cutbacks in every corner of the SEC,” Dicks wrote. “The implementation of rules for the OTC derivatives markets will be delayed, the number and scope of enforcement investigations will be limited, and exam coverage of the industry will continue to be extremely limited.”

“The Commodity Futures Trading Commission would be funded at 39 percent below what is needed, as the President requested, to implement financial reform and, as a consequence, would have to make do with about 360 fewer full-time equivalent [employees],” he added, expressing dismay that “the agency would be struggling even to carry out its pre-Dodd-Frank responsibilities.”