Tax Attorney in San Jose, 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, in addition to the more frequent San Francisco sessions at the Phillip Burton Federal Building, 450 Golden Gate Avenue. San Jose 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.

This is the single most common large-dollar federal-tax problem out of the South Bay engineering workforce. 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 company is private and you cannot sell the stock, you owe the AMT in cash at April 15 with no proceeds to pay it. 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 — useful as a planning tool but does not solve the cash-flow problem in the exercise year. (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.

RSU vesting is W-2 ordinary income at the fair market value on the vesting date under IRC §83(a). Employers withhold 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 engineer in the 35 or 37 percent federal bracket with combined W-2 base, bonus, and RSU income exceeding $400,000 to $700,000, 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 the supplemental withholding rate of 10.23 percent (or 6.6 percent for non-bonus supplementals) under-withholds against a 10.3 to 13.3 percent marginal rate. 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 RSU-heavy household with a five- or six-figure tax bill.

An IRS exam on a 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). 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 health, law, engineering, architecture, accounting, actuarial, performing arts, consulting, athletics, financial services, brokerage, banking, insurance, financing, leasing, investing, farming, mineral extraction, hospitality, and any trade or business where the principal asset is the reputation or skill of one or more employees). 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; 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 San Jose 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 Almaden Valley 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, churches, temples, mosques, professional associations, doctors, dentists; (8) location of business and employment ties — including whether the new W-2 is paid into a California bank 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 the taxpayer fails 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 in new schools, household-goods shipment, utility activations, the W-2 transition — 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 San Jose 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. 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.

San Jose has the largest Vietnamese-American community in the United States outside Westminster and Garden Grove in Orange County, concentrated in East San Jose along Story Road, Tully Road, McLaughlin Avenue, and Capitol Expressway, with Lion Plaza and the surrounding shopping centers as the cultural and business anchor. The FBAR exposure pattern is familiar: Vietnam bank accounts maintained by a parent or sibling and held jointly with you, inherited real-estate income from family property in Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, or Da Nang, 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. The same approach addresses Cambodia, Philippines, Taiwan, China, Thailand, and other Southeast Asian account exposure.

Probably not. The Mello-Roos special tax under the Community Facilities District Act of 1982 (Cal. Gov. Code §53311 et seq.) is a special assessment levied to fund infrastructure, schools, parks, libraries, public-safety services, and other facilities beyond the Prop 13 cap in newer developments. Coyote Valley, Silver Creek, parts of Evergreen, and several Almaden Valley and Santa Teresa subdivisions carry CFD special taxes that appear as a separate line item on the Santa Clara County secured-roll bill. 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 that increase the value of the property — the Mello-Roos CFD generally falls in this excluded category. A taxpayer who has been deducting the full secured-roll bill (Prop 13 ad valorem plus Mello-Roos special) on Schedule A has been over-deducting and is at risk of a CP2000 covering several prior years. The cure is amending the prior returns to back out the CFD portion and reporting the adjustment cleanly. The 1098 mortgage interest deduction is unaffected.

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 — companies do not always remind founders, and a one-day delay is fatal.

Several. Locum-tenens and per-diem 1099 physicians at Kaiser Permanente South Bay, Stanford Health Care (whose footprint extends into San Jose at the Stanford Tree House and Stanford South Bay locations), Good Samaritan Hospital, Regional Medical Center of San Jose, O'Connor Hospital, 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 in 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 San Jose households where the Almaden Valley, Willow Glen, or Rose Garden home equity often dwarfs the disposable-income calculation.

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 San Jose 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 RSU grants made during California residency, ISO exercises during California residency, or San Jose-sourced consulting income survives a move to Austin, Reno, Boise, Phoenix, 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. The Mello-Roos CFD line items are not part of the assessment appeal; CFD challenges follow the formation-and-amendment procedures under Cal. Gov. Code §53337 et seq.

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 San Jose engineer with vested RSUs, exercised ISOs, a foreign account, an LLC consulting practice, and a Coyote Valley 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.

Probably yes, on both sides. Federal IRC §6672 assesses a Trust Fund Recovery Penalty against any "responsible person" who "willfully" failed to pay over withheld taxes — the FICA and federal income-tax withholding portion of Form 941, not the employer's share. The IRS conducts a Form 4180 interview to identify responsible persons. Anyone with check-signing authority, payroll-decision authority, or knowledge of unpaid taxes can be assessed. On the California side, Cal. Unemp. Ins. Code §1735 assesses personal liability for EDD payroll-tax withholding (SDI, PIT withholding) against the same class of responsible persons. CDTFA sales-tax personal liability under Cal. Rev. & Tax. Code §6829 operates under similar principles. For an East San Jose restaurant along Story Road, Tully Road, or McLaughlin Avenue, a Lion Plaza retail unit, a Santana Row restaurant, or a Willow Glen merchant that closes with unpaid 941s, the owner usually faces all three exposures simultaneously — federal TFRP, EDD §1735, and CDTFA §6829.

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.

IRC §1061 extends the long-term-capital-gain holding period from one year to three years for partnership interests held in connection with the performance of services — the "applicable partnership interest" or API. Gain on the disposition of an API held less than three years is recharacterized from long-term capital gain to short-term capital gain (taxed as ordinary income). A carried interest in a Sand Hill Road venture fund or a South Bay-based growth equity fund is the paradigm API. The interaction with IRC §1202 QSBS is favorable — gain qualifying for the §1202 exclusion is excluded from §1061 recharacterization — but the categorization of distributions, the holding-period analysis at the partner level, the substantial-financial-investor exception under §1061(b), and the Section 83 vesting interaction all create technical traps. The combined federal recharacterization (from 20 percent capital gain plus 3.8 percent NIIT to 37 percent ordinary plus 3.8 percent NIIT) and California top rate (13.3 percent plus the 1 percent mental-health surtax over $1 million) can swing the effective rate from 23.8 percent to 55.1 percent on a misclassified position.

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 South Bay FBAR exposure where the willfulness question can shift the matter from a civil examination into the criminal-tax-investigation referral process.