Practice Areas

The Law Office of Pietro Canestrelli represents individuals and businesses in federal and California tax matters and in the business law questions that carry tax consequences. Pietro Canestrelli holds an LL.M. in Taxation and appears before the IRS, the Franchise Tax Board, CDTFA, the EDD, the Office of Tax Appeals, and the United States Tax Court.

What follows is organized by the problem you have rather than by legal category. We serve Temecula, Murrieta, San Diego, Riverside, and San Bernardino, along with clients nationally and internationally who have California exposure.

You Received a Notice or Are Under Examination

Notices carry deadlines that expire, and two of them — the Final Notice of Intent to Levy and the notice of lien filing — allow only 30 days to preserve appeal rights.

• IRS notices — what each one means and which carry rights
• IRS audits — correspondence, office, and field examinations, Appeals, and Tax Court
• Business tax audits — entity-level and payroll examinations
• ERC audit defense — a continuing enforcement priority with a six-year window
• IRS fraud accusations — eggshell audits and criminal referral risk
• IRS representation — general representation before the Service

You Owe Money You Cannot Pay

Resolution options depend on facts that can be established quickly — what the transcripts show, how much time remains on the collection statute, and whether a California balance sits behind the federal one.

• Tax relief — every resolution option and what each requires
• Back taxes owed — the collection sequence and what happens when
• Offer in compromise — federal and California programs
• Liens, levies, and garnishments — release, withdrawal, discharge, and subordination
• Unfiled returns — getting current, and why the balance is often overstated
• Innocent spouse relief — where the liability belongs to a spouse or former spouse
• Income tax matters

A California Agency Is Involved

This is where we do work that national firms generally cannot. California administers tax through three separate agencies, each with its own notice, its own protest deadline, and in the EDD’s case a different appellate body entirely. The state also has twenty years to collect, against the IRS’s ten.

• Franchise Tax Board — income and franchise tax, residency audits, the 60-day protest
• CDTFA — sales and use tax, audit methods, the 30-day petition
• EDD — payroll tax and worker classification under the ABC test
• Office of Tax Appeals — appeals before three-judge panels

The divergence between federal and California law is itself a practice area. California’s conformity date is January 1, 2025, so it does not follow the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — no bonus depreciation, no QBI deduction, no QSBS exclusion, and Section 179 capped at $25,000 against $2.5 million federally.

You Are Starting, Structuring, or Selling a Business

• Business formation — entity choice and what each structure costs in California
• LLCs · S corporations · C corporations · sole proprietorships
• Nonprofits — 501(c)(3) formation, state exemption, and compliance
• Business law — governance, contracts, and disputes
• Corporate tax — apportionment, nexus, compensation, reorganizations
• Buying or selling a business — structure, allocation, and clearance certificates
• Corporate Transparency Act — domestic entities are now exempt from reporting

You Are Planning Ahead

Planning has deadlines that precede filing. By March, most of a year’s decisions are already fixed.

• Tax planning — the federal-California gap and where value is captured or lost
• 2026 tax brackets — rates, deductions, and the SALT phasedown
• Tax credits — what survived OBBBA
• R&D credit · Section 179 · child tax credit · education credits · clean energy credits
• Estate tax — the $15M exemption, Prop 19, and trust residency
• Capital gains · home sales
• Student loan tax issues · remote work

You Have International Exposure

Foreign accounts, foreign gifts, and cross-border income carry reporting obligations with penalties that frequently exceed the tax at stake.

• FBAR and FATCA compliance — filing thresholds and penalty exposure

How We Work

Most matters begin with the same two steps: reading the account transcripts and establishing the deadlines. Those two things usually determine whether a situation is urgent or merely unpleasant, and they frequently reveal that an assessed balance is substantially overstated — a substitute-for-return assessment allows no deductions, no basis, and no credits, and filing correct returns often reduces it by more than any settlement would.

From there the work depends on posture. An open examination is about controlling the record. A collection matter is about the statute and the financial standards. A planning engagement is about modeling both tax systems before a transaction closes.

The consistent theme across all of them is that California is a separate problem from the federal one, with longer collection authority, different deadlines, and a body of law that no longer tracks the Internal Revenue Code.

Deadlines Worth Knowing

More tax matters are lost to expired deadlines than to unfavorable law. The ones that come up most often:

Notice or event	Deadline
IRS Final Notice of Intent to Levy (LT11 / Letter 1058)	30 days to request a Collection Due Process hearing
Notice of Federal Tax Lien filing (Letter 3172)	30 days from the fifth business day after filing
IRS statutory notice of deficiency (90-day letter)	90 days to petition the Tax Court — no extensions
FTB Notice of Proposed Assessment	60 days to protest
CDTFA Notice of Determination	30 days to file a Petition for Redetermination
Reporting a federal adjustment to the FTB	6 months — miss it and the assessment window never closes

The last row is the one most often missed and the most expensive. Under Revenue and Taxation Code section 18622, a taxpayer who settles a federal examination and never reports the adjustment to California leaves that year open to state assessment indefinitely.

Why the California Focus

National tax firms advertise heavily and handle federal collection work at volume. What they generally do not do is California procedure, and for a California taxpayer that is usually half the problem or more.

The differences are structural rather than cosmetic. The FTB has twenty years to collect under R&TC 19255, against the IRS’s ten, and that period can restart when later fees are assessed. It levies bank accounts without the federal notice sequence and without a 30-day appeal right. It can suspend professional and occupational licenses. And because California’s conformity date now precedes the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a growing list of federal positions simply do not carry to the state return.

A resolution that addresses only the federal liability leaves the longer-lived debt in place, still collectible, with a lien on California property. That is the gap this practice is built around.

Who We Represent

The practice divides roughly into three groups, and the work looks different for each.

Individuals and families facing an examination, a collection balance, unfiled years, or a liability that belongs to a spouse. These matters are usually decided by two things — whether the assessed number is actually correct, and whether deadlines are still open. Both are established quickly, and the answer often changes what the client thought they were facing.

Business owners across the range of Southern California industries: construction and trades, restaurants and retail, professional services, medical and dental practices, real estate, trucking and logistics, and technology. The recurring issues are entity structure, worker classification under California’s ABC test, payroll tax exposure that can become personal, sales tax audits, and the growing set of positions that work federally and produce nothing in California.

Taxpayers with cross-border or multistate exposure — foreign accounts and gifts, businesses selling into California from other states, and former California residents whose departure is being examined. These share a common feature: an unfiled return leaves the assessment window open indefinitely, so exposure accumulates quietly until an agency finds it.

We also work alongside CPAs, enrolled agents, and other attorneys, particularly where a matter has moved from compliance into controversy, or where privilege matters because facts have emerged that the return preparer cannot safely handle.

Common Questions

Do I need a tax attorney, or is a CPA enough?

For return preparation and routine compliance, a CPA or enrolled agent is often the right choice. An attorney matters where there is a dispute, where facts have emerged that could carry criminal exposure, or where privilege is needed — communications with a return preparer are not privileged in a criminal matter, and the preparer of the return under examination has interests that are not perfectly aligned with yours.

Do you handle matters outside California?

Yes. We represent clients nationally and internationally in federal tax matters, and California matters for taxpayers who have moved away but remain under FTB scrutiny — a common situation given how actively the state examines departures.

What should I bring to a first consultation?

Any notices received, with envelopes if available since dates matter; recent returns; and a short chronology of what happened. If notices have been discarded, that is workable — account transcripts reconstruct most of the picture.

Is it too late if I already missed a deadline?

Often not. A missed Collection Due Process deadline converts to an equivalent hearing rather than ending the matter. A default audit assessment can sometimes be reopened through audit reconsideration. A final assessment can still be contested by paying and claiming a refund. The options narrow but rarely disappear entirely.

Speak With a Tax Attorney

If you have received a notice, are facing an examination, owe a balance you cannot pay, or are making a decision with tax consequences you have not modeled, the useful moment to get advice is while the options are still open.

Schedule a consultation with The Law Office of Pietro Canestrelli, A.P.C., serving Temecula, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino, Murrieta, and Orange County.