A TEN-YEAR FOCUS ON TAX CONTROVERSY While it is tempting to be a ‘one-stop shop,’ I purposely focused my practice on tax controversy matters. My highly skilled staff could easily provide bookkeeping, tax preparation, or entity incorporation services and leave it at that, but I did not want to distract from our core strengths. In doing so, we have set ourselves apart as true tax controversy experts,” says Michael Dallo, CPA, J.D., LL.M, founder, principal attorney, and CEO. Founded 10 years ago, the firm’s typical clients are individuals and small businesses with complex or high-stakes tax issues or problems and companies impacted by COVID-19 government orders seeking significant tax refunds from the IRS under the CARES Act Employee Retention Credit Program. Many of the firm’s attorneys are also licensed CPAs or have extensive tax and accounting backgrounds. In addition to being skilled and effective advocates, they have the technical knowledge needed for effective and robust tax representation. This extensive tax controversy expertise paid off when the firm represented a young mother/entrepreneur who had a passion to prevent drowning and making swimming lessons accessible for all Californians. She formed a company to match up independent swim instructors with families for private lessons at the family home or other accessible pools. Her passion and commitment to her business resulted in expansion to many states outside of California and she had nearly 5000 potential swim instructors seeking opportunities to connect with potential clients through her. The EDD audited and assessed nearly $200,000 of back taxes and would have required her to put all instructors on her payroll—a tremendous burden that threatened to shut down her business. Dallo Law Group appealed the assessment and won a full reversal at the CUIAB level. The victory was of such a profound precedential impact that EDD appealed the ruling to the Board of Appeals. The firm won again at that level. Because of their advocacy, the attorneys protected this young woman from overly aggressive tax authorities and ensured she would be able to operate her business and provide for her family.
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Attorney Journals Orange County | Volume 196, 2022
© Bauman Photographers
by Dan Baldwin
THE TRIPLE THREAT Dallo earned two bachelor’s degrees from the University of San Diego—Bachelor of Accountancy and a Bachelor of Business Administration (Finance Emphasis)—and graduated magna cum laude in the top ten percent of his class. He attended law school and obtained his juris doctor from the University of San Diego where he graduated magna cum laude, order of the coif (top ten percent of his class). He then went on to obtain his Master of Laws in Taxation (LL.M.) from NYU Law— the most renowned tax program in the nation. He started his career as a CPA working in the tax department of a
