San Diego - CPA Recommendations

[Eugene Lee]

Hi All!

I was just wondering if you guys had any recommendations for a good real estate CPA in San Diego. If so, what do you like about him/her? I've never had the pleasure of working with a CPA for tax related purposes so I would really appreciate your insight! 

- Eugene 

[Dan H.]

We use Miles Lawrence (EA, Esquire but not a CPA) for our tax man (Lawrence Tax Service).  He is the named partner.  He is not cheap but he saves us money every year without being aggressive enough to ever have resulted in an audit.  In other words he finds legitimate write offs for us that warrant paying him very well.

Our tax situation is also fairly complicated.  We have an investment in North Dakota that has paid well enough that we pay North Dakota as well as CA state taxes.  Add in that we have 10 units of rentals in San Diego.  Until recently the wife had her own marketing business run out of our house. We still have the write offs associated with having the rental units and managing them ourselves. My 5/40 job was the easy part of the tax return.  So you would think we get hammered with taxes but I feel we pay our legal obligation but get virtually every write off we are entitled to.

He is exactly what we desire in a tax man except for it would be nice if he did not cost as much but sometimes you get what you pay for.  We do not want a tax man so aggressive that we are getting audited every other year but we also want someone that finds virtually all of our legitimate write offs. 

Also while he is expensive he does not nickel and dime us.  He answers quick questions over the course of the year without billing us.  Also because our tax return is so time consuming he does give us a discount off of his total bill which even with the discount is expensive.

In summary I recommend Miles but realize I am claiming up front that he is expensive - I suspect few tax men earn a higher hourly rate.

Good luck