Call us today at (800) 681-1295, contact us online, or reach our San Francisco office directly at (415) 287-6568 for your reduced-rate tax consultation. We will keep your information confidential. Our appointment only San Francisco Office is conveniently located at the following address:
1390 Market Street
Suite 200
San Francisco, CA 94102
San Francisco Tax Attorney and CPA
Tax situations can be challenging in the simplest situations. But if you are facing an unusual tax situation in San Francisco, you may be downright baffled as to how to proceed.
Both business and individual taxpayers may have uncommon tax situations in San Francisco. You may need help with income earned overseas, payroll taxes, or business succession planning with taxes in mind.
Or you may have an especially challenging tax situation, such as notification of a federal or state audit. Maybe you have seen your tax situation change significantly before, during or after a divorce.
Hiring a tax attorney who has the ability to understand tax laws and tax code at both the federal and state level can give you the peace of mind you need to handle whatever difficult tax situation you are facing. We even can help you with tax calculation if you are involved in cryptocurrency.
When you’re ready to discuss your tax situation, schedule a 10-minute call with an experienced Tax Attorney by contacting the Tax Law Offices of David W. Klasing today. We offer multiple tax services in San Francisco as dually licensed Tax Attorneys and CPAs.
Table of Contents
- International Tax Lawyer and CPA
- What Are the Benefits of Hiring a Dually Licensed Tax Attorney and CPA?
- Services Provided by a CPA vs. a Tax Lawyer
- Employment, Business, and Payroll Tax Attorneys
- Tax Audit Defense Lawyers
- Tax Audit Appealing Services
- Criminal Tax Defense Lawyers
- Tax Lawyers for Businesses and Individuals in San Francisco
Appealing an IRS or FTB Tax Audit in San Francisco
If you disagree with the result of an FTB, CDTFA, EDD or IRS audit – for example, if the FTB intends to propose a tax assessment after auditing you and finding that you owe additional payments to the state of California – you may challenge or “protest” the results with written materials, which must include a detailed explanation, supported by factual evidence and information, discussing why you feel the auditor’s findings were inaccurate or inappropriate.
IRS Audit Representation
The IRS is tasked with dealing with any issues related to federal taxes. Audits can be related to your federal income tax return or taxes paid on your business and quite often both simultaneously. Remember that 70% of communication is nonverbal and auditors are trained to read body language. Where possible, it is best to have your attorney appear on your behalf.
There are three different types of IRS audits that might occur: a correspondence audit, a field audit, and an office audit. These three variations range in terms of expected time of completion, seriousness, and invasiveness. Therefore, the first step that your dual-licensed Tax Attorney and CPA will take when evaluating your situation is identifying which type of audit you are facing.
Correspondence Audits
A correspondence audit (also sometimes referred to as a “mail audit”) will be conducted entirely through written communication, phone, and emails. This makes correspondence audits the least invasive or problematic forms of government tax noncompliance investigation possible. Typically, the auditor will be looking to verify or substantiate some sort of information on your taxes. If you have preserved your financial records, you may be able to satisfy this audit by simply supplying the IRS with the documents backing up the tax position they are challenging. Typically, if no issues exist, you can expect a correspondence audit to conclude within three to six months of your first response to the government’s requests. However, if you do not possess these documents, or you fudged the numbers under audit, you need the services of a tax lawyer to avoid incurring civil or criminal penalties.
Office Audits
An office audit will involve the taxpayer being called into an IRS office to work through any issues. An office audit implies a higher level of scrutiny than a correspondence audit, but if all issues are resolved appropriately, the process should not take much longer than the three to six months expected from a correspondence audit. You should have all your financial documents prepared to bring to the office audit, including receipts, bank statements, and personal and business tax returns. You should always have a tax lawyer appear alongside you for an office audit if you have serious concerns about what was claimed on the return under audit. Our Los Angeles-based Tax Lawyers and CPAs are ready and able to physically accompany you to wherever you are called in for your office audit.
Field Audits
A field audit is the most serious type of audit and will involve the IRS coming to your home or place of business to examine the documents in question. This type of audit is usually reserved for situations where the government may suspect criminal tax activity, the income streams in question are complex, the suspected noncompliance lasted across several years, or where one or more business entities are concerned. If the target of a correspondence or office audit fails to substantially cooperate at the initial stages of their action, the government may subsequently pursue a field audit to get to the bottom of the issue. Field audits frequently may take more than a year to resolve. You should engage the services of a dual licensed Tax Attorney & CPA as soon as you learn a field audit is to occur.
California Franchise Tax Board (FTB) Audit Representation
The California Franchise Tax Board (FTB) enforces the state’s income tax laws. The FTB may conduct their own investigations regarding issues that are unique to California’s income tax laws or may bring a challenge based on their assessment on your level of compliance. For example, there may be issues if you recently moved to California regarding when you became a resident and when you started owing taxes to the state. The IRS and the California FTB have different rules, for example, regarding net operating losses. As such, you may sometimes owe large debts to the FTB even if you are not found to owe anything to the IRS. An experienced tax attorney can work to resolve any issues associated with such an audit before they become problematic. They can also help negotiate an installment plan if you are in fact found to owe money to the FTB.
California Employment Development Department (EDD) Audit Representation
The California Employment Development Department (EDD) deals with issues related to the state payroll tax. Every employer is required to take payroll taxes out of their employees’ checks and hold the money in trust to eventually turn over to the appropriate state or federal agency. Payroll tax issues can come up in federal audits in addition to audits by the EDD. If you are not taking the appropriate amount out of your employees’ paychecks or failing to turn the money held in trust over as required, you could face civil or criminal penalties.
Most of the issues in these audits relate to disputes about whether an individual is an employee or an independent contractor. Payroll taxes are not required to be taken out of checks paid to independent contractors. There are a variety of ways that the state calculates who is and is not an independent contractor. An experienced tax law attorney can help gather evidence to show the EDD you have properly classified workers as independent contractors. Note: with the recent passing of AB5, worker classification audits are on the rise.
California Department of Tax and Fee Administration (CDTFA) Audit Representation
The California Department of Tax and Fee Administration (CDTFA) is tasked with auditing any issues related to the payment of state sales taxes. This can be an issue related to your business failing to charge a proper amount of sales tax or charging the sales tax and not properly remitting it to the state. If the CDTFA believes that your business is underpaying sales taxes, they will request to look at your books and other documents and compare the information in your business records to the amount of sales tax revenue remitted to the state. A California sales tax audit can become your worst nightmare if you have been underreporting cash sales.
An experienced sales tax attorney can help you collect the proper documents and communicate with the CDFTA on your behalf. Once the audit is complete, we can challenge any issue we see at the exit interview with the auditor and their supervisor. If the CDTFA closes the case and sends a Notice of Determination, you need to file a petition within 30 days to challenge it. If the petition is not filed in a timely manner, you will be required to pay whatever amount they have determined you owe.
Unfortunately, this process is seldom simple or straightforward. On the contrary, the appellate system poses many challenges for taxpayers who wish to dispute the results an FTB, CDTFA, EDD or IRS audit, making dependable, knowledgeable representation essential. If you think the results of an audit are incorrect and wish to dispute the findings, ask us about IRS appeals representation in San Francisco. We can walk you through the process for appealing an audit and act on your behalf throughout, ensuring you file the appropriate paperwork, meet all legal deadlines, and satisfy other criteria for making a robust appeal. We stand ready willing and able to litigate a Federal or California tax issue, where it becomes necessary, but in our experience most issues can be settled before an expensive trial.
Criminal Tax Defense Lawyer in San Francisco
Though tax crimes are nonviolent in nature, offenders are nonetheless subject to some of the nation’s harshest criminal penalties. Many tax offenses are felonies prosecuted in federal court, which typically hand down longer sentences and greater fines than courts which function at the state level. To provide an example, the federal statute for tax evasion establishes a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison, in addition to fines as great as $100,000 for individuals. Moreover, criminal fines can be compounded by IRS restitution orders, which can cost thousands or even millions of dollars depending on the nature and severity of the offense. Finally, a tax-related conviction could saddle you with a permanent felony record, which may make it difficult or impossible to find employment, obtain loans, rent at certain properties, purchase or own a firearm, travel abroad, or take advantage of life’s other opportunities. The criminal tax defense attorneys at the Tax Law Office of David W. Klasing represent defendants charged with misdemeanor and felony tax crimes, including CPAs and tax preparers. Our tax evasion attorneys can protect your rights, prepare you for court hearings, manage your legal documentation, and fight to reduce your penalties if you have been charged with tax evasion, offshore tax evasion, willful failure to file a tax return, payroll tax fraud, making false statements, or other tax crimes.
San Francisco, CA Tax Lawyers for Businesses and Individuals
There is no need to feel panicked or overwhelmed by the U.S. Tax Code, a notice from the government, or an IRS auditor. Instead of struggling to interpret complex statutes and IRS regulations – or worse, attempting to push a tax issue under the rug – allow the experienced, award-winning team at the Tax Law Office of David W. Klasing to help you bring your tax matter to an efficient resolution. Our objective is to mitigate any criminal or civil penalties you may be facing while helping you make the most of the U.S. Tax Code with regard to estate planning, business planning, or financial planning for your future. No matter how complex or difficult the issue may be, our diligent attorneys are prepared to sit down and work with you to develop a strategy and achieve a solution.
One of the Best Tax Attorneys in San Francisco
The San Francisco Tax Lawyers and CPAs at the Tax Law Office of David W. Klasing combine over 20 years of legal experience assisting businesses and individual taxpayers with the full spectrum of state, federal, and international tax matters, ranging from employment and payroll tax to divorce tax issues to general tax planning and tax preparation to criminal defense in felony tax cases. Whether you need to defend your innocence, prepare for a tax audit, or simply get help making sound financial decisions for your family or your company, look to our full-service California tax firm for zealous professional support. To book a reduced-rate initial consultation, contact our San Francisco office at (415) 287-6568 or (800) 681-1295, or contact us online to book a consultation.What Are the Benefits of Hiring a Dually Licensed Tax Attorney and CPA?
Tax issues, especially those involving businesses, can be extremely complicated. When faced with a tax problem, tax planning or when trying to file your taxes correctly, you may wonder whether it best fits your needs to hire a Tax Attorney or to hire a Certified Public Accountant (CPA). These two types of professionals offer very different, but often overlapping, services to the taxpayer. Your strongest possibility of successfully resolving your high stakes tax controversy or legally minimizing your tax liability is combining the best of both worlds by hiring a dually licensed Tax Attorney and CPA like the professionals at the Tax Law Offices of David W. Klasing, who can provide an unsurpassed comprehensive level of service due to our team’s extensive experience and focused backgrounds and in depth education in both of these professional fields.
Services Provided by a CPA vs. a Tax Lawyer
A CPA is a professional trained in the field of accounting who is licensed through, among other things, having a required educational background, met an experience requirement and passed a rigorous course of exams. CPAs are considered one of the most trusted and versatile types of financial planners because of their extensive educational background, which includes training in auditing, taxation, bookkeeping, and business planning, business law and strategy. CPAs can assist you with year-round record-keeping as well as with tax preparation services. They can be useful in staving off potential issues with the IRS or state taxing authorities before they occur.
By way of comparison, a Tax Lawyer is broadly trained in the law, and specifically in the complex field of Tax Law. They must go through the rigors of law school and pass the bar exam before being licensed. While a CPA might focus more on managing your records and preparing the forms required for your returns, a Tax Lawyer’s focus will be more on long-term tax and business planning, compliance and short-term dispute resolution. For example, although CPAs are technically able to represent you in an audit, a Tax Lawyer will typically have much more power and skill via specialized training into your constitutional rights and rules of evidence and will be indispensable where it comes to advising you of what to say and not to say to protect your rights and legal interests from potential eggshell audit and their associated criminal tax ramifications.
One of the vastly advantageous benefits offered by a Tax Attorney that does not apply to a CPA is the attorney-client privilege. Under the robust attorney-client privilege that exists in the legal profession, attorneys are almost always barred from speaking about anything told to them by their clients during their representation of them without first obtaining their client’s permission. Sometimes, your attorney will also bring in a consulting accountant who can receive derivative attorney-client privilege through a Kovel letter, and who can help them with more accounting-specific issues that arise. A Kovel letter is unnecessary where an accountant, EA or CPA is directly employed by a Law Firm that is providing a legal service to a client.
Accountant-client privilege, meanwhile, is far weaker, and it is not unheard of for a CPA who realizes that they are in trouble to turn on their client and become a witness against them, especially where they prepared the tax returns that are at issue. If you are concerned about the potential for criminal tax liability, which can occur in cases where you willfully failed to report income, failed to file tax returns, claimed deductions or credits for which you were not eligible, or other forms of tax fraud, being represented by a Tax Attorney is tremendously more advantages than choosing a CPA, EA or CTEC certified tax professional, especially where they prepared the tax returns at issue.
How Do I Choose a Tax Lawyer or CPA in San Francisco?
Whether you are facing an IRS audit, upcoming civil or criminal tax charges against you or your small business or are simply concerned about the prospect of any of these unfortunate possibilities in your future, you can benefit from enlisting the help of a dual licensed Los Angeles Tax Attorney & CPA. However, not just any Tax Lawyer will do in every case. This is because tax issues have the potential to progress and affect other areas.
To address issues at every stage, you will want a dual licensed Tax Attorney & CPA who has experience and know-how in a variety of tax-related fields from the very beginning. This way, you can establish a direct partner that can assist with all of your needs, rather than having to go to different shops to address multiple issues.
The best way to guarantee that the firm you choose can handle all of your issues is to choose one that also provides diligent accounting services. The Tax Law Offices of David W. Klasing boast Tax Attorneys that are also Certified Public Accountants (CPAs), giving us a well-rounded perspective on our clients’ tax circumstances. Using our interdisciplinary knowledge, we can both help you in forming useful and legal tax strategies that legally reduce your tax burden and represent you in situations where the government decides to institute enforcement actions against you to simultaneously protect your net worth and your very liberty.
Our dual-licensed Tax Attorneys and CPAs also service clients throughout the State of California, including the City of San Francisco. Not only are we familiar with the various state and municipal tax regulations that may affect you, but we can also be by your side physically as you take on the California or federal governments.
A Dually Licensed Tax Lawyer and CPA Offers You the Best of Both Worlds
If given a choice between consulting with a CPA or a Tax Lawyer, it is usually best to go with the Tax Lawyer, as they offer you greater protection and more skill in the area of successfully resolving legal disputes with the IRS. However, Tax Lawyers can still lack many of the accounting skills most helpful to those filing complex returns and attempting to reconstruct tax records. As such, the best option is to retain an experienced dually licensed Tax Attorney and CPA like those at the Tax Law Offices of David W. Klasing. Our tax professionals have education, licensure, and experience in both practice areas. We can help you properly file your domestic or international taxes before any issues occur and also deal with any problems with the IRS or State Taxing Authorities that may already exist, including guiding you through a tax audit while minimizing or mitigating the potential for criminal tax liability, minimizing the assessment of additional tax penalties and interest being or helping you avoid an audit or criminal tax investigation by enrolling you in a domestic or offshore voluntary disclosure program.
Call the Tax Law Offices of David W. Klasing for San Francisco Tax Help Today
When you call our dual-licensed Tax Attorneys and CPAs at (800) 681-1295 today, you can learn more about the wide range of services that we provide to our San Francisco clients every day.

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Why Hire a San Francisco Dual Certified Tax Attorney & CPA, Reason #1
Confidentiality

Why Hire a San Francisco Dual Certified Tax Attorney & CPA, Reason #2
Managing Liability

Why Hire a San Francisco Dual Certified Tax Attorney & CPA, Reason #3
Negotiation Skills

Why Hire a San Francisco Dual Certified Tax Attorney & CPA, Reason #4
Financial Expertise

Why Hire a San Francisco Dual Certified Tax Attorney & CPA, Reason #5
Avoiding Conflicts

Why Hire a San Francisco Dual Certified Tax Attorney & CPA, Reason #6
Saving Money

International Tax Lawyers & CPAs in San Francisco
The United States is unlike most nations in that tax is imposed on the basis of citizenship rather than residence. Even if you physically reside in San Francisco, you may nonetheless be subject to international tax and info reporting requirements if:- You maintain bank accounts in a foreign country, including business accounts, checking accounts, and savings accounts.
- You earn or store income in a foreign country, including cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC) stored in foreign wallets/accounts. Our Bitcoin tax lawyers have extensive experience in this area of tax law.
- You own an interest in an offshore business entity.
- You have offshore rental income.
- You received an offshore inheritance.
- International FBAR Lawyers
- OVDP Lawyers (Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program)
- Tax Lawyers for Expats
San Francisco Employment, Business, and Payroll Tax Attorneys
Business owners must exercise greater caution than the average taxpayer, not only when quarterly tax forms and payments are due, but throughout the year. Strategic tax planning can set a business up for success – and lack thereof can doom the business to failure. Serving corporations, partnerships, sole proprietorships, non-profit organizations, religious or clerical organizations, and limited liability companies (LLCs) throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, our business tax attorneys and business transaction lawyers can assist your company or organization with:- Business Succession Planning
- Entity Selection
- Payroll (FICA, Trust Fund) and Employment Tax Issues
- Tax Havens for Companies
San Francisco Tax Audit Defense Lawyers
Businesses or individual taxpayers may be chosen for an audit, or “examination,” by federal tax authorities like the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and/or state tax authorities like the California Franchise Tax Board (FTB), which performs similar functions as the IRS, but operates at the state level. There are many reasons a taxpayer or entity can be selected to undergo a tax audit, ranging from innocuous causes like random selection to serious issues like suspected tax evasion. No matter the underlying cause of an IRS tax audit or FTB tax audit, it is vital to be represented by an experienced tax attorney who understands how to negotiate effectively while guiding and protecting the taxpayer throughout the audit process. Our IRS tax attorneys provide audit representation in San Francisco for all types of state and federal examinations, including but not limited to: < br/>San Francisco Practice Areas
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