For tech professionals, executives, and other high earners across Irvine and Orange County, restricted stock units are often the largest single line of compensation — and the most misunderstood at tax time. RSU taxes arrive in two separate stages, the default tax withholding is frequently too low for high-bracket employees, and one common brokerage reporting quirk causes people to pay tax on the same income twice. This guide explains how RSU income is actually taxed, where th

If you own a California S-Corp, partnership, or LLC taxed as either one, the pass-through entity tax election — the PTET — has quietly been one of the most valuable moves available to business owners since 2021. It is an IRS-acknowledged workaround to the federal cap on deducting state taxes, and California just extended it through 2030. But 2026 is also the year the automatic answer went away: federal law raised the SALT deduction cap, and for some owners the math has genuin

Ask a high-income business owner what frustrates them most at tax time and the answer is usually the same: the contribution limits on ordinary retirement accounts feel almost irrelevant at their income level. Maxing out a 401(k) barely dents a seven-figure profit. There is a category of retirement plan built for exactly this situation — the defined benefit plan — and for the right owner it allows annual pre-tax contributions that routinely reach into six figures. It is one of

The employee retention credit was one of the largest pandemic-era relief programs ever offered to American employers — and in 2026, it has become one of the most heavily scrutinized items in the tax system. The window to file a new claim is closed. The IRS enforcement window is very much open. For business owners who claimed the credit, the question is no longer “how much can I get?” It is “can my claim withstand an IRS audit — and what happens if it cannot?” This employee re