Generally, What Is the Firm's Strategy in a Multi-State Tax Matter?

So if you've watched some of the other videos in the series, I think you've kind of gotten a flavor for how I look at multi-state tax issues but let me just summarize. Number one I don't believe in just jumping in. What I believe in is really taking the time to develop a strategy that makes sense for a business. I run a small business myself, I'm aware of the challenges that come with businesses and I'm aware that the legal decisions that get made for a company aren't the driving factor. A lot of times the business has to do what's best for itself, so my approach is always business first. It's about taking legal decisions or tax decisions and framing that into what makes the most sense for the business. You know I'm certainly going to argue for being in compliance, I'm certainly going to argue for mitigating risk from a legal perspective, but I'm not going to sacrifice the profitability of a business. To do that we're going to have to find a compromise sometimes. So our approach generally is about building a strategy and then really it's about the efficiency in execution of that strategy. It's about taking the client's resources, whether they're a small company or whether they're a multi multi-million dollar corporation, it's about taking those resources, it's about taking the resources of the CPA firm that they have, about taking the resources of any bookkeeping that they have whether internally or externally, and the way that I look at this from our firm's perspective is we're kind of the quarterback of the team. The client is in charge of dictating what needs to be done but we go out and we help execute that. We'll certainly offer advice, we'll certainly offer guidance and direction and what we think is best in order to help our clients make the best decisions they can, but the client runs the show and it's our job to not only execute the strategy that they want us to, but do so in the most efficient way. It's not about just plugging away and getting things done although that certainly is important. The important thing is what is the best thing for the business, where is the business best served by taking the strategy that we've developed in step one and translating that across the business? Is there way that we can implement the tax strategy into the client's sales process so that the salespeople or the resources that the client has are keeping them out of trouble? What are other ways we can work with the client's business processes to make sure that what we're doing is most effective? And then most commonly with multi-state issues, where are areas that we can save the client money? There are a lot of areas that most clients miss when they do that. So oftentimes, clients will retain us on a matter and what we try and do with our expertise is to bring as much value as we can to that individual client situation. We're always a fan of trying ideas, of trying to mitigate costs and try to do the best thing for our clients so that's generally the approach that we take when we handle a multi-state tax matter.

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Sam Brotman, JD, LLM, MBA

Owner and Director of Legal
Brotman Law

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