Tax Attorney in San Luis Obispo County

The U.S. Tax Court does not hold a dedicated San Luis Obispo trial city. SLO County petitioners are calendared to Los Angeles, with sessions at the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building, 255 East Temple Street, Los Angeles CA 90012, roughly 200 miles south of the San Luis Obispo County Courthouse on Palm Street via Highway 101. A petitioner designates "Los Angeles, California" as the place of trial on the petition under Tax Court Rule 140. San Francisco is the alternative for petitioners with northern-California work or travel patterns.

Severance pay from PG&E is ordinary W-2 wages in the year received. A lump-sum payment can push you into the top federal bracket, trigger California's 13.3 percent top rate, add the MHSA 1 percent surtax under Cal. Rev. & Tax. Code §17043 if you cross $1 million, and bring the federal Additional Medicare Tax. Withholding at the flat 22 percent supplemental rate (or 37 percent above $1 million) almost always underwithholds the true liability for California top-bracket filers. Planning options include negotiating multi-year payout where the employer agrees, electing §409A nonqualified deferred compensation structuring where available, using the NUA election under IRC §402(e)(4) on PG&E retirement-plan stock at the same triggering event, accelerating deductible expenses into the high-income year, and bunching charitable deductions through a donor-advised fund. We model the path before you sign.

Net Unrealized Appreciation under IRC §402(e)(4) allows a qualified-plan participant taking a lump-sum distribution of employer stock at a triggering event (separation from service, age 59½, death, or disability) to recognize the cost basis of the stock as ordinary income at distribution and defer the unrealized appreciation as long-term capital gain at later sale. For a long-tenured PG&E plant employee whose employer stock was acquired at low cost basis over many years, the spread can convert a six-figure ordinary-income hit into long-term-capital-gain treatment at the federal 0/15/20 percent rates. California treats all of it as ordinary, but the federal differential alone is often substantial. The election is all-or-nothing on the stock, it requires a true lump-sum distribution in one taxable year, and rolling the stock to an IRA blows the election. Get this right before you sign rollover paperwork.

IRC §263A — the Uniform Capitalization Rules — requires producers to capitalize direct and certain indirect costs of producing inventory into the basis of that inventory rather than expensing them in the year incurred. For a winery, that includes grape crush costs, fermentation tank costs, oak and cooperage, barrel-aging labor, depreciation on barrel-aging facilities, allocable utilities, and indirect labor and overhead. The IRS exam often finds that costs were expensed currently rather than added to bulk wine inventory, with the deduction timing-shifted into a later vintage year. Defenses include showing the expense properly belongs to a separable activity (such as marketing, tasting-room operations, or a separate vineyard entity under a Schedule F), demonstrating compliance with the simplified production method or the simplified resale method, and substantiating reasonable allocation methodology. Small-producer exceptions exist but are narrow. The settlement is usually a closing agreement on methodology going forward plus a deficiency on the open years.

A CP2000 fires when the IRS's information-return database (1099-MISC, 1099-NEC, 1099-K, W-2, 1098-T, etc.) shows income that did not match what you reported on Form 1040. The two most common Cal Poly versions: first, a 1099-MISC or 1099-NEC for summer-quarter consulting, extension teaching, or research-spinoff work that landed on the return only as a W-2; second, supplemental retirement-plan distributions, CalPERS adjustments, or 403(b) rollover income reported by the plan custodian that did not match the return. Self-employment-tax exposure under IRC §1401 is typically added on the 1099-NEC piece. The defense is either to substantiate that the income was already on the return (sometimes it is, just not where the IRS matching looked) or to file a Form 1040-X correcting the omission with offsetting Schedule C or Schedule SE deductions. FTB issues a parallel notice through MyFTB.

IRC §280A creates three buckets. First, the de-minimis rule: if you rent fewer than 15 days in the year, the rental income is not reported and rental expenses are not deductible. Second, the vacation-home rule: if personal use exceeds the greater of 14 days or 10 percent of rental days, deductions are limited to rental income (no rental loss). Third, the rental-property rule: if personal use is below the threshold, the property is rental property subject to passive-activity rules under §469 and material-participation tests for any loss claim. Self-employment-tax exposure depends on whether substantial services are provided — cleaning, breakfast, daily linen service — which can flip the property from passive Schedule E to active Schedule C with self-employment tax. Document personal-use days carefully, separate cleaning services from personal use, and consider an LLC or short-term-rental election in advance.

Yes. Each incorporated city in SLO County — Pismo Beach, Morro Bay, Arroyo Grande, Grover Beach, Atascadero, Paso Robles, and the City of San Luis Obispo — collects its own TOT, typically in the 9 to 12 percent range. Unincorporated coastal areas including Cambria, Cayucos, Avila Beach, Oceano, San Simeon, and the County Mesa fall under the county TOT ordinance. Airbnb, Vrbo, and other platforms collect and remit TOT to the relevant jurisdiction on host bookings. Direct bookings through your own website do not get platform collection — you owe the TOT yourself, plus the business-license registration and the short-term rental permit if your city requires one (Cambria, Pismo, and Morro Bay all have STR ordinances and permit caps in coastal zones). Back-taxes on direct bookings are an enforcement priority. We help reconstruct, register, and resolve.

EDD audits of farm-labor contractors look past the FLC paperwork to determine whether the grower is the true employer of the field crew under the ABC test in Cal. Lab. Code §2775. If EDD reclassifies the workforce as the grower's employees, the grower picks up back UI, ETT, SDI, and PIT withholding for three years plus penalties under Cal. Unemp. Ins. Code §1126. Defenses include documenting the FLC's independent business operation, the FLC's California Labor Commissioner registration, the FLC's own H-2A petitioning, and a written agreement allocating direction-and-control of the work. The Nipomo Mesa strawberry belt sits in the Santa Maria Valley reach, and EDD's regional agricultural audit team treats it as part of the larger Santa Maria-Nipomo enforcement zone. We file the protest, work the audit fieldwork, and pursue OTA appeal where appropriate.

Prop 19, effective February 16, 2021, narrowed the prior parent-child exclusion sharply. For a principal residence, the child must use the transferred property as a principal residence within one year of transfer to qualify, and the excluded value is capped at the parent's assessed value plus $1,000,000 (indexed). For non-principal-residence transfers — which includes most vineyard land held in a family LLC or separately from the homestead parcel — the parent-child exclusion is unavailable, and the property reassesses to fair market value on transfer. For a Paso Robles AVA vineyard with a low Prop 13 base and current market value in line with the AVA's pricing, the property-tax delta can be five- or six-figure annually. Planning options include the surviving-spouse step-up, lifetime sales paired with seller financing or installment sales under IRC §453, family-LLC fractional-interest discounts where appropriate, and intentionally defective grantor trusts. Federal estate and gift-tax considerations under IRC §2001 and the unified credit run in parallel.

Under IRC §165(h), personal casualty losses are deductible only if the loss is attributable to a federally declared disaster. The January 2023 atmospheric-river events generated FEMA declarations for several Central Coast counties, including SLO County in certain windows. If your property loss fits within a declared disaster window, you can claim the loss on the original or amended return for the loss year, or elect to claim it on the prior year's return under IRC §165(i) for faster refund recovery. The loss is reduced by insurance recoveries and by the $100 floor and 10-percent-of-AGI floor for personal-use property; for income-producing or business property the floors do not apply. Reasonable-cause penalty abatement is also available for filings that lapsed during the recovery period. We pull the FEMA declaration zone-and-period record and run the casualty-loss math against insurance recoveries.

California uses the domicile test at Cal. Rev. & Tax. Code §17014 and FTB Publication 1031, weighing nine factors: physical-presence days, location of family, location of primary residence, driver's license, vehicle registration, voter registration, banking, professional licenses, and business or social ties. Keeping a Pismo, Cambria, Avila, Paso Robles vineyard, or San Luis Obispo home as a "second home" while claiming Nevada residency is the most common reason departing-resident audits fail. Cal Poly emeriti faculty maintaining campus library affiliations, vineyard owners retaining Paso operations, and Diablo Canyon retirees with continuing PG&E ties all carry residual factor weight. The defense is a documented clean break at the time of the move: new driver's license, new voter registration, sale or lease of the California home, transfer of professional licenses, and a careful physical-presence log under the 9-month presumption rule.

The IRS San Luis Obispo Taxpayer Assistance Center is located at 1106 Industrial Way, San Luis Obispo CA 93401 — the in-county option for SLO taxpayers. Appointments are required and made through apps.irs.gov/app/office-locator or by calling 844-545-5640. SLO city and Cal Poly residents are within minutes of the office; Pismo, Avila, and Arroyo Grande are within 20 minutes; Paso Robles, Atascadero, and Templeton are an hour or so via Highway 101; Cambria and San Simeon are an hour via Highway 1. For most resolution work, in-person visits are not required — we represent clients by Form 2848 PoA and route notices directly to counsel.

FTB suspension under Cal. Rev. & Tax. Code §23301 happens when an entity fails to pay the $800 minimum franchise tax, fails to file the annual return, or fails to file a Statement of Information with the California Secretary of State. A suspended entity loses the right to sue, defend a lawsuit, or contract in California courts. Contracts signed during suspension are voidable. To revive, file the missing returns, pay the tax plus penalties and interest under §19131 and §19132, and submit FTB Form 3557 (revivor request). The SOS Statement of Information must also be brought current. Once both agencies confirm compliance, the FTB issues a Certificate of Revivor.

A Notice of Federal Tax Lien recorded with the SLO County Clerk-Recorder clouds title until released, subordinated, discharged, or withdrawn. For refinance, the typical path is subordination under IRC §6325(d): Form 14134 (Application for Certificate of Subordination of Federal Tax Lien) shows the IRS that the refinance proceeds will pay down the tax debt or that subordination otherwise helps collection. If the underlying liability has been paid, request release on Form 668(Z). If you are on a streamlined IA under $25,000, lien withdrawal under Fresh Start (Form 12277) is available and clears title cleaner than release. The FTB State Tax Lien parallel under Cal. Gov. Code §7174 has its own release and subordination procedures.

No. The firm is headquartered at 1100 S. Robertson Boulevard in Los Angeles, roughly 200 miles south of the San Luis Obispo County Courthouse. We represent clients across all 58 California counties. SLO County engagements run by phone, secure portal, and email; in-person meetings happen by appointment at the LA office for clients who prefer face-to-face. We appear at the FTB on SLO matters, U.S. Tax Court LA trial sessions at the Roybal Federal Building, the IRS San Luis Obispo TAC on Industrial Way, and the SLO County Superior Court at the Veterans Memorial Building on Palm Street as case calendaring requires.