Tax Attorney in Cupertino, California

Yes. The U.S. Tax Court designates San Jose as a place of trial for periodic sessions held at the Robert F. Peckham Federal Building, 280 S. 1st Street, San Jose 95113 — roughly ten miles southeast of the Apple Park campus — in addition to the more frequent San Francisco sessions at the Phillip Burton Federal Building, 450 Golden Gate Avenue. Cupertino petitioners typically designate San Francisco for the wider session calendar, but specific sessions are calendared in San Jose — the choice is made on the petition. The federal U.S. Tax Court bar admission is national; we appear at both locations.

Apple RSU vesting is W-2 ordinary income at the fair market value of Apple stock on the vesting date under IRC §83(a). Apple withholds federal at the supplemental flat rate under IRC §3402(a) of 22 percent for supplemental wages up to $1 million per year and 37 percent for amounts above $1 million in a single payment. For a Senior, Staff, or Principal Engineer at Apple in the 35 or 37 percent federal bracket with combined W-2 base, bonus, RSU, and ESPP income exceeding $400,000 to $1,000,000, the 22 percent supplemental flat-rate withholding routinely under-shoots by 10 to 15 percentage points. The same gap exists on the California side, where supplemental withholding under-shoots the 10.3 to 13.3 percent marginal rate (plus the 1 percent mental-health surtax over $1 million). The cure is to file Form W-4 to increase federal additional withholding, file DE 4 to increase California additional withholding, or make estimated tax payments under IRC §6654 to cover the gap. Without that adjustment, the April 15 balance due plus failure-to-pay penalty and interest hits a typical Apple-RSU-heavy Cupertino household with a five- or six-figure tax bill.

This is one of the most common large-dollar federal-tax problems for Apple engineers who came in from a prior startup. On exercise of an Incentive Stock Option, the bargain element (fair market value at exercise minus exercise price) is not regular-tax income, but it is an Alternative Minimum Tax preference item under IRC §56(b)(3), reported on Form 6251. If the prior-company stock is private and you cannot sell, you owe the AMT in cash at April 15 with no proceeds to pay it — even after the Apple W-2 has begun. Options: (1) Federal IRC §6159 Installment Agreement against the AMT balance — streamlined under $50,000, non-streamlined with Form 433-F over that, Partial Pay if the AMT exceeds your CSED-period collection capacity. (2) IRC §7122 Offer in Compromise where the doubt-as-to-collectibility math works. (3) Currently Not Collectible status freezing collection until a liquidity event. (4) The IRC §53 deferred AMT credit recovers the AMT over future tax years against your now-substantial Apple W-2 regular-tax liability — useful as a planning tool. (5) IRC §83(i) qualified-equity-grant deferral may apply to certain private-company option arrangements, but the program has restrictive eligibility. The California side under R&TC §17062 has its own AMT regime with separate state IA and compromise paths.

The Apple Employee Stock Purchase Plan is a tax-favored plan under IRC §423. The offering period is six months with a 15 percent discount applied to the lower of the grant-date FMV or the purchase-date FMV (a "lookback" feature). The favorable tax outcome — a "qualifying disposition" — requires holding the purchased shares for two years from the grant date AND one year from the purchase date. In a qualifying disposition, the lesser of (a) the discount calculated against the grant-date FMV, or (b) the actual gain, is ordinary income; the remainder is long-term capital gain. In a disqualifying disposition (selling before both holding periods complete), the entire bargain element at purchase (purchase-date FMV minus purchase price) is ordinary W-2 income on the disposition-year return, with any additional gain or loss treated as capital. Apple reports the qualifying-disposition or disqualifying-disposition ordinary income in W-2 box 14 (and includes it in box 1 for qualifying years), but Form 3922 (sent to participants for each purchase) shows the raw numbers the participant or preparer has to work with. The most common error is double-reporting: counting the ordinary-income piece in W-2 box 1 and then NOT adjusting Schedule D basis upward by that same ordinary-income amount, which results in the same dollars being taxed twice. The reverse error is also common: failing to recognize a disqualifying disposition on a sale less than two years from grant, and reporting the full gain as capital. The 1099-B from the broker reports only the purchase-price basis — it does NOT add the ordinary-income adjustment. The cure for prior-year ESPP errors is amending the affected returns with the corrected Schedule D basis.

An IRS exam on an IRC §1202 Qualified Small Business Stock exclusion walks through each qualifying condition. The original-issuance requirement (stock acquired directly from the issuer, not on the secondary market). The five-year holding period from issuance to sale. The C-corporation requirement (the issuer was a domestic C-corporation throughout the hold — an LLC-to-C-corporation conversion under IRC §351 must be properly timed and documented, which is a common Apple-alumni-startup fact pattern). The $50 million aggregate gross-asset cap under §1202(d), tested at all times before and immediately after the issuance. The active-business requirement under §1202(e) (at least 80 percent of assets used in the active conduct of a qualified trade or business throughout substantially all of the hold). The qualified-trade-or-business limitations under §1202(e)(3) (excludes consulting, financial services, brokerage, and trades where the principal asset is the reputation or skill of one or more employees — an issue for some Apple-alumni AI advisory or technical-services startups). The redemption rules under §1202(c)(3) that disqualify the entire issuance if the issuer redeems significant stock from the holder or related parties within prescribed windows. The working-capital and real-property limits. The federal-versus-California conformity gap (California decoupled from §1202 in 2013 under R&TC §17152; exclusion is federal-only). Every one of these conditions is a potential exam-disallowance trigger. The substantiation file built at the time of the original issuance is what saves the exclusion at audit.

This is the highest-volume FTB workload coming out of Cupertino since 2020. The closer-connection test under Cal. Rev. & Tax. Code §17014 and the Appeal of Stephen Bragg (2003-SBE-002) nine-factor analysis controls. The factors include: (1) location of all real-property holdings — did you keep the Monta Vista, Garden Gate, Rancho Rinconada, or Inspiration Heights primary residence or sell it; (2) where your spouse and dependents reside; (3) state of vehicle registration; (4) state of driver's license; (5) state of voter registration; (6) location of bank accounts, brokerage accounts, and safe-deposit boxes; (7) location of professional and social affiliations — gyms, country clubs, temples, churches, mosques, gurdwaras, professional associations, doctors, dentists; (8) location of business and employment ties — including whether your new Apple Austin W-2 is paid into a Texas bank account or routed back to a California account; (9) the homestead exemption claimed in another state. The Appeal of Bindley (OTA 2018-OTA-179P) added the corporate-officer-day-count analysis. The FTB will examine three or four years and assess on every year where you fail to establish a clean break. The defense package documents the move at the time of the move — lease or deed in the new state, voter registration, driver's license, vehicle registration, new doctors, kids transferred out of Cupertino Union School District or Fremont Union High School District, household-goods shipment, utility activations, the Apple internal-transfer paperwork — not after the audit notice arrives. Pre-move documentation is what wins this case.

Almost certainly yes. The FBAR (FinCEN Form 114) requirement under 31 USC §5314 applies to U.S. persons — which includes resident aliens for U.S. tax purposes under the IRC §7701(b) substantial-presence test — with a financial interest in or signature authority over foreign financial accounts with an aggregate value exceeding $10,000 at any point during the calendar year. Indian NRE accounts, NRO accounts, demat brokerage accounts, PPF retirement accounts, EPF employer-mandated retirement accounts, and joint accounts with parents or siblings in India all aggregate together. The H-1B holder living and working in Cupertino is a U.S. person for FBAR purposes from the start of substantial presence (generally year one, with the day-count formula at IRC §7701(b)(3)). The separate Form 8938 (FATCA) requirement under IRC §6038D kicks in at $50,000 (single) or $100,000 (joint) of specified foreign financial assets, and asset-types extend beyond bank accounts to include foreign-issued securities and certain foreign retirement arrangements. The U.S.-India tax treaty (1989) coordinates foreign-tax-credit relief under IRC §901 against Indian TDS on the same income but does NOT relieve the FBAR or Form 8938 disclosure obligation. Penalties for non-willful FBAR failure are up to $10,000 per account per year; willful failures rise to the greater of $100,000 or 50 percent of the highest account balance. The Streamlined Filing Compliance Procedure is the most common cure for past non-willful noncompliance.

Yes, with some additional layers. The FBAR threshold of $10,000 aggregate and the Form 8938 thresholds operate the same way regardless of country. The U.S.-China income tax treaty (1984) coordinates foreign-tax-credit treatment under IRC §901 for tax withheld at source in China, but Hong Kong operates as a separate jurisdiction — the U.S.-Hong Kong tax-information-exchange agreement is narrower than a full income-tax treaty, and Hong Kong-source income (including from HKEX-listed securities, Hong Kong bank accounts, and Hong Kong family-business retained earnings) is treated separately from mainland-China income for treaty purposes. Mainland Chinese bank accounts at ICBC, China Construction Bank, Bank of China, China Merchants Bank, and Agricultural Bank of China, A-share brokerage accounts on the Shanghai or Shenzhen exchanges, and family-business retained earnings in PRC RMB all aggregate to FBAR/8938 thresholds. The Streamlined Filing Compliance Procedure is the standard cure for non-willful past noncompliance. The willfulness analysis is fact-intensive — particularly where Apple's internal compliance environment may have flagged the account through the L-1 visa-sponsorship process or through routine HR documentation. Family-given account ownership ("the account is in my parents' name but I'm a joint signatory") is still an FBAR-reportable account.

The U.S.-India income tax treaty (1989, with subsequent protocols) addresses federal income tax but not California state tax. California is not a party to any U.S. tax treaty. California's parallel foreign-tax-credit mechanism sits at R&TC §18001 and allows a credit against California tax for "net income or wages tax paid to another state of the United States" — the credit does NOT extend to foreign income taxes paid to India. A Cupertino H-1B taxpayer who pays Indian TDS on NRE interest, NRO interest, dividend income from Indian securities, or rental income from Indian real property can claim the U.S. federal foreign-tax-credit under IRC §901 on the federal return but cannot claim the equivalent credit on the California 540 return. Indian TDS still produces a federal benefit, but the California tax on that same Indian-source income is paid in full. The treaty tie-breaker article does help in dual-resident situations — an H-1B holder with a closer connection to India than to the United States in a given year can claim treaty-resident status in India and limit U.S. (and therefore California) reach on certain income categories — but the analysis is fact-intensive and the FTB scrutinizes treaty-tie-breaker positions on Cupertino returns closely.

Cupertino has substantial Indian-American, Chinese-American, Taiwanese-American, Korean-American, and Vietnamese-American small-business communities, with the Cupertino Village shopping center (and the neighboring 99 Ranch Market plaza) as a cultural and business anchor. The FBAR exposure pattern is familiar: family accounts maintained by parents or siblings overseas and held jointly with you, inherited real-estate income from family property in Ho Chi Minh City / Hanoi / Seoul / Busan / Beijing / Shanghai / Taipei, family-business retained earnings overseas, or remittance-routing accounts used for property purchases. The Streamlined Filing Compliance Procedure — Domestic (for U.S. residents) or Foreign (for non-residents who meet the day-count tests) — is the standard cure. Domestic Streamlined requires three years of amended 1040s, six years of FBARs, a Form 14654 non-willful certification, and a 5 percent miscellaneous offshore penalty on the highest year-end account balance during the look-back period. The non-willful certification is fact-intensive; relying on family verbal assurances that the account was "not yours" or "for the parents" is not enough. The willfulness analysis turns on what you knew, when you knew it, and what reasonable inquiry would have revealed.

Cupertino has limited Mello-Roos Community Facilities District exposure compared to newer South Bay developments. The Mello-Roos Community Facilities Act of 1982 (Cal. Gov. Code §53311 et seq.) authorizes CFD special-tax assessments on post-1982 California developments to fund infrastructure, schools, and services beyond the Prop 13 cap. Cupertino's residential housing stock is mostly pre-1982 and Prop 13 protected, with limited new construction since the city is fully built out. CFD assessments where present in Cupertino are usually narrow and tied to specific public-improvement bonds rather than the broad multi-billion-dollar CFD districts found in Coyote Valley, Silver Creek (south San Jose), and parts of Tracy and Mountain House. Where a CFD line item does appear on a Santa Clara County secured-roll bill for a Cupertino parcel, IRC §164(a) allows a deduction for "state, local, and foreign real property taxes" but Reg. §1.164-4(b) excludes special assessments levied for local benefits — the CFD generally falls in this excluded category. The Mello-Roos analysis for a Cupertino home buyer is normally less significant than the Prop 13 base-year-value reset on a recent purchase, which often produces a much larger near-term assessed-value increase than any CFD line item.

It can be. The Dynamex decision codified at Cal. Lab. Code §2775 applies the ABC test to determine whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor for California wage-and-hour, payroll-tax, and workers'-compensation purposes. Part A: free from the hiring entity's control. Part B: performing work outside the usual course of the hiring entity's business. Part C: customarily engaged in an independently established trade or business. The B-prong is the hard one for South Bay software consultants — if you write code for a tech company whose business is writing software, you fail Part B and the work is presumed to be employment. Cal. Lab. Code §2776 carved out a business-to-business exemption with twelve sub-conditions including bona fide business location, business license, contracting in writing, freedom to set rate, retention of profit and loss, and so on — if you can satisfy all twelve sub-conditions and document them, the B-to-B exemption applies. EDD audits work backward from a payroll-tax exposure on the hiring entity, and the contractor's individual 1040 Schedule C can be examined in parallel under IRS Form SS-8 analysis. The federal IRS test (the common-law twenty-factor test under Rev. Rul. 87-41) is more lenient than the California ABC test, so a worker can be a contractor for federal purposes and an employee for California purposes simultaneously.

Effectively no. The IRC §83(b) election must be filed within 30 days of the transfer of property in connection with the performance of services. The 30-day deadline is statutory and the IRS lacks authority to extend it — the relief mechanism under Reg. §301.9100-3 that applies to many other elections does not extend §83(b). A missed §83(b) means the property continues to be taxed under the default rule of IRC §83(a) at fair market value at each vest date as ordinary compensation income, with the spread between FMV at vest and the amount paid taxable to the recipient and subject to federal and California income-tax withholding and FICA. On a founder's stock that grows from $0.01 per share at grant to $100 per share by final vest over four years, the missed election can cost millions of dollars in additional ordinary-income tax that a timely election would have eliminated. Going forward, the planning lesson is that a calendar reminder on the 30-day deadline is the only protection — startup companies do not always remind founders, and a one-day delay is fatal.

Several. Locum-tenens and per-diem 1099 physicians at El Camino Health Mountain View (the closest major hospital to Cupertino), Stanford Hospital (in Palo Alto, with satellite practices reaching into the South Bay), Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara, the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, and the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center system file Schedule C and owe self-employment tax under IRC §1401 at 15.3 percent on net earnings up to the Social Security wage base, plus 2.9 percent Medicare above. The Section 199A qualified-business-income deduction has SSTB limitations that phase out at higher income brackets for medical practices. Self-employed retirement vehicles (Solo 401(k), SEP-IRA, Defined Benefit cash-balance plans) provide the largest single tax-deferral lever and need to be set up before year-end. California layers self-employment income on top with the 10.3 to 13.3 percent personal income tax under R&TC §17041, the LLC fee under R&TC §17942 if the physician operates through a single-member LLC, and the $800 minimum franchise tax for a Professional Corporation. The AB 5 reclassification risk under Cal. Lab. Code §2775 affects physicians less than other 1099 workers (Cal. Lab. Code §2783(b) carves out licensed physicians, surgeons, dentists, podiatrists, psychologists, and veterinarians from the ABC test), but the federal Form SS-8 analysis still applies.

Yes — three of them. FTB compromise authority sits at Cal. Rev. & Tax. Code §19443 (filed on FTB Form 4905 PIT for individuals or 4905 BE for entities). CDTFA operates a parallel offer program for sales-and-use tax under Cal. Rev. & Tax. Code §6832. EDD compromise authority sits at Cal. Unemp. Ins. Code §1192 for payroll-tax liabilities. Each program has its own form, financial-disclosure standard, and review path. The FTB §19443 compromise unit sits at FTB headquarters at 9646 Butterfield Way in Rancho Cordova. Submitting an FTB OIC does not affect a federal IRS OIC; the two are evaluated by separate teams under different RCP standards. California is generally tougher on primary-residence equity than the IRS — relevant for Cupertino households where the Monta Vista, Garden Gate, Rancho Rinconada, or Inspiration Heights home equity often dwarfs the disposable-income calculation, especially in school-zoned neighborhoods where the per-square-foot premium remains durable.

Two periods matter. For FTB assessment, Cal. Rev. & Tax. Code §19057 generally gives the FTB four years from a filed return to assess, with no statute on unfiled returns. For FTB collection, §19255 gives the FTB 20 years from the latest of assessment, due date, or final return filing — double the federal 10-year period under IRC §6502. CDTFA assessment runs three years under §6487 (eight for unfiled or fraud), with collection generally 10 years under §6711. EDD has its own windows under the Unemployment Insurance Code. A Cupertino filer who watches the federal CSED expire in 2026 may still face FTB collection until 2036 on the same year — and the FTB's reach into California-source income from Apple RSU grants made during California residency, ISO exercises during California residency, or Apple ESPP shares purchased during California residency survives a move to Austin, Reno, Bellevue, Boise, or anywhere else.

The Santa Clara County Assessor's office at 70 W. Hedding Street, East Wing, 5th Floor, San Jose 95110 sends an Annual Notice of Assessed Value each year. Disputes over the assessed value go first to an informal Decline-in-Value (Prop 8) application filed with the Assessor, which compares the current Prop 13 base-year value (capped at 2 percent annual growth) against the market value of the property on January 1 of the assessment year. If the Prop 8 application is denied or insufficient, the next step is a formal Application for Changed Assessment filed with the Santa Clara County Assessment Appeals Board at the same address, under R&TC §1603-1611. The filing window is 60 days from the Annual Notice of Assessment, or by September 15 for the regular roll — whichever applies under the county's local rule. The AAB hearing is on the record and the burden of proof is on the taxpayer to establish a value below the assessed amount. Cupertino Prop 13 base-year values are usually low relative to market because the residential housing stock has been held in family hands across decades; the more common Cupertino assessment dispute involves a recent purchase where the new base-year value reflects an above-market peak, followed by a market correction in the same calendar year.

Yes. The IRS examines federal income tax under the Internal Revenue Code; the FTB examines California state income tax under the Revenue and Taxation Code. The two agencies operate independent audit programs but share information through formal information-exchange agreements. An IRS adjustment to federal taxable income is reported to the FTB under the federal-state agreement, and a Revenue Agent Report can trigger a parallel California assessment within four years under R&TC §19057. CDTFA sales-tax audits and EDD payroll audits can run alongside both. A single Apple engineer with vested RSUs, exercised ISOs, an Apple ESPP cycle history, a pre-Apple QSBS position, foreign accounts, an LLC consulting practice, and a Monta Vista primary residence can have one tax year open in four different forums at once: IRS exam on the equity-comp characterization, FTB exam on residency, CDTFA exam on a side e-commerce sales-tax exposure, and EDD exam on whether the consulting clients should have been treated as W-2 employers.

IRC §7345 authorizes the IRS to certify "seriously delinquent" federal tax debt — currently $62,000 for 2026, indexed for inflation — to the State Department, which may then deny passport renewal or revoke an active passport. The certification reverses when the debt is paid, an Installment Agreement is in place, an OIC is accepted, an active CDP hearing is pending, or Innocent Spouse Relief is in process. For L-1 and H-1B status renewals processed by USCIS, an unpaid federal tax balance is not a direct ground for denial under the Immigration and Nationality Act, but the I-485 adjustment-of-status process and the N-400 naturalization process both require disclosure of federal and state tax filings and any outstanding tax debt. Failure to file required returns can lead to a "good moral character" finding against a naturalization applicant under 8 USC §1101(f)(3). The cleanest path: enter an Installment Agreement or accepted OIC before the next renewal, naturalization filing, or international travel back to India, China, Taiwan, Korea, or Vietnam.

Yes. Communications between you and a California-licensed attorney for the purpose of seeking legal advice are protected by California Evidence Code §954 attorney-client privilege and the parallel federal common-law attorney-client privilege, subject to the usual exceptions (crime-fraud, waiver). The narrower federally-authorized tax practitioner privilege under IRC §7525 applies to non-attorney CPAs and EAs but does not extend to criminal-tax matters. An attorney handling your tax case retains the broader privilege that survives criminal investigation — relevant for Cupertino FBAR exposure where the willfulness question can shift the matter from a civil examination into the criminal-tax-investigation referral process, particularly for India, China, or Hong Kong account exposure of significant size.