video-blog Archives - Page 20 of 24

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.

What Are Things That I Should Look for When Hiring a Tax Attorney?

April 23, 2026July 13, 2020 by Brotman Law

Key Takeaways

Topic: What Are Things That I Should Look for When Hiring a Tax Attorney?
I have a favorite saying in the office which I used with a number of my clients.
It’s called right person, right seat.

I have a favorite saying in the office which I used with a number of my clients. It’s called right person, right seat. So the important thing in any professional services relationship whether it’s a tax attorney or a CPA or any other professional advisor is making sure you have the right person sitting in the right seat to do the right job. The problem with a lot of tax attorneys is a lot of tax attorneys focus on federal issues and they focus on a very limited scope of federal issues. The reason for that is a lot of the traditional tax litigation appears in a judicial setting. So when you’re interviewing a tax attorney and they mentioned they go to court a lot that should be a sign that perhaps this person may or may not be

How Are Sales and Use Tax Audits Different?

April 23, 2026July 13, 2020 by Brotman Law

Key Takeaways

Topic: How Are Sales and Use Tax Audits Different?
Companies are selected for sales tax audits in a variety of different ways but the one thing I want to highlight is that the state has very limited resources in terms of which c….
Sales tax audits in particular are tremendously resource consuming activities, so the state has to be very careful about which companies it selects for audit and which it doesn’t.

Companies are selected for sales tax audits in a variety of different ways but the one thing I want to highlight is that the state has very limited resources in terms of which companies it chooses to audit. Sales tax audits in particular are tremendously resource consuming activities, so the state has to be very careful about which companies it selects for audit and which it doesn’t. So for example the way

How Are Companies Selected for Audit? Why Am I Being Audited?

April 23, 2026July 13, 2020 by Brotman Law

Key Takeaways

Companies are selected for sales tax audits in a variety of different ways but the one thing I want to highlight is that the state has very limited resources in terms of which companies it chooses to audit.
the process works is headquarters will identify certain accounts.