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IRS and CA State Enforcement Action Rising 5/11/2020

April 23, 2026July 15, 2020 by Brotman Law

Key Takeaways

Topic: IRS and CA State Enforcement Action Rising 5/11/2020
Read the full article below for complete details on this topic.

Good Morning it’s Monday May 11th and I wanted to talk to you today about the collection and enforcement efforts that are ramping up across the country with the IRS and the state of California so I’ve spent a lot of time talking with collection agents and with auditors over the last few weeks and although there’s a moratorium on collection and examination activity through the middle of July it’s going to be open season after that let me explain why so the federal government gave away three trillion dollars in fonts and we all know nobody in their right mind is goin to raise taxes this year given the coronavirus climate so the government just gave away a lot of money they aren’t going to raise taxes so the natural conclusion is they’re going to get it back through enforcement and specifically they’re going to go after businesses so I want to share a couple of things that businesses can do now to protect themselves in the current coronavirus climate so the first thing that a business can do to protect itself is to get its finances in order and to come up with a projection for how the rest of the year is going to lock I realize that we’re dealing with a lot of uncertainty right now a lot of us are either stay at home orders we don’t know exactly when the lights are going to go back on but using a reasonable projection you should be able to track kind of what your revenue is going to be for the rest of the year and if you’ve got up you need funding or if you’ve got idle funding how that’s going to impact your decision to carry your business so the very first thing you need to do whenever you’re in a hole is you need to stop digging and figure out where you’re at having a longer projection at least through the end of the year is going to let you know number one how much cash is gonna come in number two what you project your expenses are and number three how much you’re gonna have left over a profit to devote to any back liabilities whether they be taxes or other obligations so you can get your arms around the situation the second thing you’re going to do is you’re going to stop being so not all liabilities are created equal so for example if you accrue payroll tax liability or sales tax liability in particular those are deemed as trust fund taxes those are money is that you hold in trust for somebody else so when you run a coffee shop and you sell a cup of coffee and you collect the sales tax that is your customer paying sales tax on a product you are holding that money in place for the state and you are remitting those funds so you are not allowed to spend that money and if you spend that money and you both with that tax liability later the government will come after you personally for those liabilities so you need to draw a line between the liability is that you could be held personally responsible ie trust fund taxes and other liabilities that your business only may be liable for and then you need to start prioritizing those liabilities based on who gets paid first but the important part about this is don’t spend money right now that’s not yours and the final thing that you need to do is build a plan so you’ve got your revenue projection you’ve got your expenses going out you know what you’re gonna owe in terms of liability and even if you’ve had cash challenges a lot of businesses have been really hurting by this we’ve had businesses that basically disappeared overnight even if you’re a million or a couple million dollars in debt right now there is a way out of this situation but what it’s gonna take is it’s going to take planning lights are gonna come back on in the IRS to the state as of July 15th so you could take the next three months particularly three months where you’re gonna be out of business and really build your financial situation 2% an offer to the IRS IRS collection agents are basically going to throw people into two buckets there’s the bucket of people that they can’t do anything with and there’s a bucket of people where there’s some meat on the bone they’re going to go after so the more that you can present yourself like bucket one and really minimize yourself as a target for the government that’s the way things are going to go so it’s about building a plan about minimizing your exposure on the collection side and then on the audit side you need to make sure your house is in order it’s finding.

Why Should I Hire Brotman Law to Represent Me With My Multi-State Tax Issue?

April 23, 2026July 15, 2020 by Brotman Law

Key Takeaways

Multi-state taxation is one of our primary practice areas and it’s kind of our jam.
It’s something that we pride ourselves on because multi-state taxation is a very complex area.
It’s a very fast changing area and it’s an area that we provide a lot of value for our clients, so we live and breathe in this world.

Multi-state taxation is one of our primary practice areas and it’s kind of our jam. It’s something that we pride ourselves on because multi-state taxation is a very complex area. It’s a very fast changing area and it’s an area that we provide a lot of value for our clients, so we live and breathe in this world. Both me, the rest of our senior attorney team and all of our staff are very familiar with helping clients through these difficult situations. We really excel at this for a variety of reasons but the one I would point to first and foremost is that it’s not that we just understand the tax law – anybody can understand the law – but where we excel is we really understand the procedure. We understand not only the way the law is written, but how that law is enforced and how enforcement varies from a state like California to one like Alabama or Wyoming or Tennessee. So in looking at this from a landscape perspective, we can really help our clients understand and navigate risk. The other reason that we’re very good at this and why we excel at multi-state taxation is our firm focuses on the business first. Most of our clients are businesses or business owners. A lot of our clients are businesses outside the state of California and we deal with businesses in a lot of different industries. We deal with professional services businesses, we deal with manufacturers, we deal with retail we deal with hospitality, and we deal with all sorts of businesses across the country so we’ve really developed a knowledge of not only what we can do for a client from a tax perspective, but we take the time to understand our clients and their business processes so that we’re recommending strategies that make sense. We can have the best tax plan in the world and if it doesn’t make business sense for the client, it’s not a good solution so we look at this from business first. We try and minimize risk. We try and minimize waste, we try to minimize cost and we try to maximize efficiency and value. We’re doing that by looking at it from a business lens versus a legal lens and I think that’s very important. It’s one thing that really distinguishes us as a firm because a lot of lawyers don’t know how to run a business. A lot of lawyers aren’t sensitive to cash flow, they’re not sensitive to the fact that a company may be operating with limited resources and they’re not sensitive to the fact that certain things just don’t make sense for an organization. So when we approach a multi-state tax issue, we’re really going for focus first and I think that’s a philosophical difference that we have with a lot of law firms and why we’ve been so successful in this arena. You know what I would encourage you to do is let’s have a conversation. Let’s sit down. Let’s talk about where your company is at. Let’s talk about some of the challenges that you think that you’re facing. Let me offer my input into the some of the challenges that you may or may not be aware of and then let’s try and work out a solution. Then if you need us going forward, you’re more than welcome to retain us.

Why Should I Hire Brotman Law to Defend Me in My Criminal Tax Matter?

April 23, 2026July 14, 2020 by Brotman Law

Key Takeaways

When you go through a criminal tax case, there are a lot of different phases.
Criminal tax cases are marathons and not sprints.
They can be multi-year investigations, they’re a huge commitment they’re a huge threat because of the success rate of the US Attorney’s Office.

When you go through a criminal tax case, there are a lot of different phases. Criminal tax cases are marathons and not sprints. They can be multi-year investigations, they’re a huge commitment they’re a huge threat because of the success rate of the US Attorney’s Office. There is a 90% conviction rate, so you have to be on guard. They don’t take Criminal Investigations on the IRS side unless they think they’re going to be successful in a conviction and the biggest problem for clients is not just the jail time; the criminal investigative process can take so much out of a client because there are so many other negative effects between the impact that it has on a client’s family and on their children, the impact that it has on a client’s business and their professional relationships, and all those things are potentially at risk even if there is an ultimate exoneration in the case. So from our end our firm really has a lot of experience in dealing with these types of cases. We know tax in all phases of the civil side and we know it in all phases of the criminal side and so when we take on a matter, there’s a lot of strategy that goes in that process. There’s a strategy in terms of how we’re going to handle this from a legal perspective, there’s a strategy involved in terms of how we’re going to handle this from a resource perspective and it’s a fight now. Make no mistake about it; these are the biggest stakes that we face in any one of our matters, because there’s a real possibility that at the end of the day our client is going to end up in jail and we take that very seriously so we’re going to do everything that we can on our end to mitigate any consequence. We’re looking constantly for avenues to turn the case civil, to make it go away, to reduce things down to the lowest level possible – we’re constantly throwing up blocks in the investigative process. We’re constantly working with the US Attorneys and the agents to take the air out of their case and we’re fighting as hard as we can on behalf of our clients. I think it’s our tenacity that really separates us as a firm because we have the experience in going through these cases. We can empathize with our clients and we fight on their behalf, because it’s personal to us so that’s the thing I think that really separates us. What I would invite you to do is if you’re watching this and you want to know more, come sit down and talk with us. Come meet me. Come meet our senior team. Let me lay out the facts of your case and let’s figure out if it’s a good fit. If it’s not a good fit, I promise we’re not going to take the case but what I can say is if we get a sense of what the conduct is, we get a sense of what the risks are and we can develop a strategy to help mitigate those risks, I promise you that whether or not you make the decision to retain us, you’re going to be better served by walking out of our office. If you’re not better served by sitting down with us then I haven’t done my job as an attorney and I don’t tolerate that so I think those are all the reasons why we make the best criminal tax team and why you should think about retaining us as a firm.

Why Should I Hire Brotman Law to Defend Me in My Payroll Tax Audit?

April 23, 2026July 14, 2020 by Brotman Law

Key Takeaways

If there’s one thing that we do really well in this firm it’s handling payroll tax audits.
We have a lot of experience in dealing with the EDD through a variety of their district offices.
We’ve been to district offices all up and down California.

If there’s one thing that we do really well in this firm it’s handling payroll tax audits. We have a lot of experience in dealing with the EDD through a variety of their district offices. We’ve been to district offices all up and down California. You can handle these issues in front of them all the way from sitting down here in San Diego up into Northern California and we do a lot of these types of cases. Over the course of doing this, we’ve really developed a body of experience. Our body of experience is not only at the audit level, it’s with EDD settlement and it’s with EDD appeals. So the nice thing about our firm is all of our team has a really good understanding for how things play out at different levels in the process. When we have an EDD audit client come in, we’re not only pre-auditing them to present information to the auditor, but we’re constantly thinking about how things are going to play out in front of an administrative law judge in front of the higher levels and we’re really working to build a case. We’re really good at figuring out what our client’s liability is at the beginning of this and then mitigating that as much as possible. We’ve got a very good success rate with the EDD particularly in cases where we have some frustration or some difficult issues and we’re able to resolve them. Now the EDD is a difficult organization to work with. You take the San Diego office for example, you’ve got a group of Auditors in the San Diego office that’s really good and you got a group that’s not so good and we kind of know who the good ones are and the bad ones are because we have that familiarity with them. The auditors know that our level of preparation and our level of organization and in moving through the audit is really unmatched. I mean we really focus in and get these audits to a point where we’re delivering the best results for our client. So I think our process is great. I would encourage you sit down with myself, sit down with one of our senior attorneys, let us walk you through your particular EDD audit situation and let’s at least develop a plan. If you decide to take that plan and go somewhere else or not retain us, no problem. But at least you’ll have a good understanding of what your risk is. You understand how the EDD is going to look at you from a penalty perspective, how they’re going to look at your contractors and then you can make your own decision on how you want to proceed and what the best course of action is.

How Does Billing Work at Brotman Law?

April 23, 2026July 14, 2020 by Brotman Law

Key Takeaways

They never get a real sense for why they’re being billed, how they’re being billed, what the strategy is and it just seems like a black hole.
It drives me nuts because you know I’m a lawyer by trade but I’m also a business owner.
So the way that we handle billing is we work to develop a strategy at the beginning of the case.

So one of my biggest pet peeves about attorneys and one of my biggest client complaints about other attorneys is the fact that they bring on this attorney to handle this matter and then they put a retainer down and then it just feels like they’re throwing money at the problem. They never get a real sense for why they’re being billed, how they’re being billed, what the strategy is and it just seems like a black hole. It drives me nuts because you know I’m a lawyer by trade but I’m also a business owner. I rent a small business, I sympathize with my business clients and I feel a lot of empathy towards them because I go through a lot of the same challenges they do and the last thing I want is to bring on a matter where it’s just like this bottomless money pit. So the way that we handle billing is we work to develop a strategy at the beginning of the case. The first way that you solve problems is figuring out what the problem is. So once we figure out what the problem is, then we can identify the steps that will solve that problem. So in working out those steps we can help our clients from a billing perspective and we can help ourselves from a billing perspective and here’s how we do that. When we get ready to take an action, we will call our client and will say “hey client, we are going to take this action. Here’s why this action is a good action. Here’s potentially other actions that we could take. Here’s why we’re not going to take those actions and then here’s how much time we think this action is going to take and how much it’s going to cost.” So as we’re going through the matter process, we’re in constant communication about the work that we’re doing and about the estimated cost. Now I’m not a crystal ball around here and I don’t have any magic beans to make people’s legal costs go away, but we’re good at what we do and I can reasonably estimate during the course of a matter how things are going to go. So we try and keep our clients in lockstep not only with the work that we’re doing, but the billing that’s being accumulated in the process. Whenever a client comes to me and says I don’t understand my bill or I don’t understand how much this matter is going to cost, I take that personally because I like clients to understand the cost structure. That matters because it’s better for them and it creates less problems for us as a firm so we send out bills twice a month and you know you always get a copy of the bill. They’re delivered electronically and so we really actively work to keep our clients in the loop and not in the dark with respect to any billing issues.

What Is the Cost Structure at Brotman Law?

April 23, 2026July 14, 2020 by Brotman Law

So the first thing I’ll tell you about the cost structure of our firm is we bill on an hourly basis. We don’t flat fee matters and our time is our time. Our staffs billing rates are set based on their level of experience and who they are, so at the bottom level we have our paralegals that bill at $150 an hour and at the top level we have me that bills at $525 an hour and then everybody else falls somewhere in between. So the way that we try and mitigate costs for our clients is by spreading work between the different levels. We try and generally have the lowest person who’s competent to do the work do the work in order to save cost. We’re not going to send a paralegal in on a criminal matter or we’re not going to send an attorney to go do $150 hour level work but we try and work within the structure that we have to be as efficient for the client as possible. I’m a small business owner myself and I believe in driving value. I believe in the work that we do providing value to our clients because we’re in tax and, because California and the IRS aren’t going away anytime soon, trust me when I tell you we’re not running out of work. So our team is not really incentivized to bill you any more or any less than what we have to. We bill you as much as

Key Takeaways

So the first thing I’ll tell you about the cost structure of our firm is we bill on an hourly basis. We don’t flat fee matters and our time is our time.
we need to to get the job done effectively. We work with our clients to try and mitigate clients’ legal costs because we’re sensitive to the fact that they’re businesses and businesses have a lot of other costs.

Who Will Be Working on My Matter at Brotman Law?

April 23, 2026July 14, 2020 by Brotman Law

Key Takeaways

Topic: Who Will Be Working on My Matter at Brotman Law?
So at Brotman Law we have a couple of different tiers of people and the tiers are not driven by the value of the people.
They’re just driven by the cost structure for how much those people bill, so as a lower tier we have paralegals and we have administrative support staff.

So at Brotman Law we have a couple of different tiers of people and the tiers are not driven by the value of the people. They’re just driven by the cost structure for how much those people bill, so as a lower tier we have paralegals and we have administrative support staff. Most of our paralegals bill anywhere between $150 and $225 an hour based on their level of experience. Above that, we have a category for mid-level associate attorneys that can range anywhere from $250 an hour all the way up to $400 an hour. Then we have a senior attorney class that kind of overlaps with that and ranges anywhere from $350 to $525 and I’m at the very high end of that range in terms of our billing. So there’s nobody who has a billing rate that’s higher than mine in the firm and the way that we divvy up work and who’s gonna work on matters is largely a factor of who is the lowest cost person that can most competently do the task and we look at competency not only from a “can they do the tasks” but also “who’s most efficient to do the tasks.” So for example, there are tasks that our senior paralegal can do because she’s so good, but there are times that I will allocate something to our senior attorney because he can do it a lot faster or in cases of our junior attorneys and our senior attorneys, occasionally our senior attorneys will step in to senior projects because they can do them a lot quicker than the junior people. We try and maximize efficiency around here because it makes clients happier and we try and have a spread of people working on matters because a lot of tax matters are collaborative efforts so depending on your particular situation, you may work with more junior people, you may work with more senior people, but I can promise you that no matter who you’re working with, there’s always vision, there’s always transparency and there’s very active communication on all of our matters to make sure that they’re running smoothly for our clients.

What Is the Best Way to Communicate With the Firm?

April 23, 2026July 14, 2020 by Brotman Law

So we have two methods of communication at the firm: we have email and we have phone calls. We don’t have text messages and the reason we don’t have text messages is because text messages are very hard to track internally and we like for all of our calls and all of our emails to come in and be documented so that they go into your file. If for some reason I’m out of the office one day, our senior attorney can pick up the file, can read through the notes and the history of communications, and be in lockstep with me and the decisions that I would make on the course of your matter. So the best way to handle communications from our firm is by segregating what the best type of communication is for longer explanatory things and things that are better reduced to writing, we prefer email. It helps get thoughts in order and we can more easily move emails under the file, although emails take a lot of time to compose sometimes so we tend to shy away from those.

Key Takeaways

So we have two methods of communication at the firm: we have email and we have phone calls.
The best method of communicating is usually by phone. We like to set phone conferences just because things get a little crazy around here during the course of the day with a lot of the activity that happens.

How Long Should I Expect My Case to Last in the Firm?

April 23, 2026July 13, 2020 by Brotman Law

Key Takeaways

Topic: How Long Should I Expect My Case to Last in the Firm?
So let me give you a very rough estimate.
Most cases in the firm average about six months.

So let me give you a very rough estimate. Most cases in the firm average about six months. We have some that are longer and we have some that are much shorter. Longer or shorter depends on who, what type of case it is, who’s gonna be dealing with us on that case and the level of complexity on that case. So what I commonly say is the cost and time dedicated to matters is driven by decisions to the extent we’re able to make clear and quick decisions that move matters along. It’s based on documents, so how much paper is involved? How much we need to go through, how much we need to submit, so on and so forth. And it’s based on bureaucracy. How much hassle and headache are we getting from the government in dealing with your matter? When we have a live person and that person is competent, things move very quickly. When we’re dealing with IRS never-never-land, it gets a little bit more complicated. We try not to build for inefficiency but when dealing with the government there’s always a certain amount of inefficiency baked into the process. When you submit a document sometimes they sit on it for a few months and you don’t get an immediate result. They’re not really a snap your fingers type of organization. With that said, with tax matters, because we’re controlling the scope of the information and we’re controlling a lot of the movement on the case and we can put the ball back in their court, our matters generally move pretty quickly. So six months is a rough estimate, a year is a good track record for longer cases but that goes through peaks and valleys and obviously there’s a lot of variables that go into it.

What Makes Brotman Law Unique?

April 23, 2026July 13, 2020 by Brotman Law

So I point to a couple of different things when I differentiate our firm from other firms. The first thing I would differentiate is that our firm is really built for businesses, for business owners and for corporate officers, and the reason for that is is I’m a small business myself. I love being a small business and I love all the challenges and the excitement and the risk that comes with running your own business. When I set up my tax firm, I wanted to build a business that catered to the need of businesses and to help those businesses help their clients and be the best platform that they could be so I designed a firm around not only fixing people’s tax problems but working with small businesses to make them the best versions of themselves that they can possibly become. A lot of that is accomplished through tax and the thing that we’re doing but it’s a gateway for something much much larger. Number two I would point to our experience in separating ourselves from other firms that are out there. We have a lot of experience particularly in dealing with

Key Takeaways

So I point to a couple of different things when I differentiate our firm from other firms.
the state and that experience is really valuable because it’s not just about understanding the law, it’s really about understanding the way the law works and how it applies to businesses.