FAQs

We offer tax preparation, tax planning, bookkeeping, accounting consulting, payroll, payroll consulting, and audit representation.

A CPA (Certified Public Accountant) has demonstrated professional competence by passing a rigorous examination, requiring more than a bachelor’s degree, and sufficient industry experience before being authorized to use the CPA credentials. Once a CPA, we must meet rigorous continuing education requirements and adhere to a stringent set of ethical standards.

The professional you choose should have technical knowledge and treat you with respect. Does your CPA and advisor take time to listen to you? Does your CPA and advisor return your calls in a timely manner? Do you feel comfortable asking your CPA and advisor a question? More importantly, do you feel comfortable working with your CPA?

Yes. We specialize in delivering comprehensive solutions and not just focusing on tax reduction. We help clients prioritize complex options that increase their wealth while lowering taxes at each step.

Absolutely! It is critical that you contact a CPA to discuss various options of business forms, taxation of those forms, and the effect upon owners. Too often, clients start with the wrong structure and create high taxation or excessive administrative burdens.

Yes. Our clients live around the world, so we primarily hold meetings via video conferencing. In-person office visits are by appointment only.

We exchange documents via secure portals.

Yes. We are paperless and request all documents to be provided electronically in either excel, word or PDF.

Yes. We maintain strict confidentiality in accordance with the rules and regulations of the IRS, AICPA, NACVA, ABFA, and California Board of Accountancy.

Yes.

Our team has over 30 years of combined experience.

Brian Grigg has worked in small, regional, and large CPA firms. Brian has been working in taxation, accounting, payroll, employee benefits and investment services for 20 years.

We work with most individuals. However, we don’t work with foreign reporting beyond standard FBAR reporting.

We provide tax, accounting, and payroll services for small businesses of $5 million or less in gross receipts.

We work with businesses of all sizes for employee benefits and other financial services. See our sister company Grigg Wealth Management for who we serve regarding investments.

Yes. While we work with all industries, we specialize in the medical profession, high net-worth individuals, and those in the armed forces.
 
The medical profession carries a wide range of possibilities that allows us to exercise our entire skill set. Many in the medical profession have or can easily have businesses, high student loan debt, high compensation that requires advanced planning, and they are compassionate and a joy to work with. We enjoy working with all fields in the medical profession including doctors, dentists, veterinarians, nurses, support staff, etc.
 
High net-worth individuals usually require complex planning and allow us to exercise our complete skill set.
 
As a veteran, Brian enjoys providing quality advice to those who have served our nation.

Yes. We have a “Quality Accounting Program” where we will conduct various quality control checks to help you improve the confidence and accuracy of your accounting.

However, we do not complete CPA type reviews or audit since we do not provide any CPA assurance services. We do not issue any opinions on your accounting and what we do can’t be relied upon by third parties.

We conduct a series of checks on your accounting to determine if there are areas needing improvement or owner attention. Many times we find errors in bank reconciliations, errors in or neglected accounts, improperly classified activity, and we find lack of various quality control procedures.

However, this program is not an audit, review, or compilation so no opinion is given and our results can not legally be used by third parties. Should you need audit, review, or compilation services then we have referrals for you.

No. Our staff is a critical part of all engagements. However, staff work is reviewed by partners and/or managers.

We recommend keeping your records for at least seven years. If you have or had carryforward data on a tax return, keep your records scanned in for as long as possible to defend the carryforward data. Scan your materials and keep them online on a secure portal.

Yes. We work with all business entity types but we specialize in S-corporations. We help clients with the special administration requirements of, special employer/owner benefits of, and special tax benefits of S-corporations.

Yes. S-corporation owners must pay themselves a reasonable salary before they take any distributions of equity if they materially participate in the corporation and if they meet ownership percentage requirements.

But what is reasonable? The answer is subjective, and we help you identify how much salary is appropriate. Paying too low of a salary can cause the government to reclassify shareholder draws as wages incurring additional payroll taxes, penalties, and interest. However, if you pay too high a salary then you may lose tax efficiency.

At some point, a very high salary may be necessary to maximize retirement planning. Identifying how this works in a client’s unique situation is where we add value.

The answer depends on your unique needs.
How many owners are there?
What type of owners are there?
How much control is needed over distributions of equity?
What type of equity is needed?
Do you anticipate your services or products will expose you to legal liability?
Will a solid insurance scheme be sufficient to protect you from legal issues?
Are you looking for tax efficiency for a start-up small business?
What type of benefits do you want to offer owners, if any?
How much revenue is generated by the company?
How much revenue do you anticipate will be generated by the company in the near future?
 
There are many other considerations to determine what type of entity is best. We help clients reconcile all these considerations to maximize their goals and preferences.

Usually yes. However, the process to change may be simple to very complex. Some formation types make it easier to change. We will help you determine if it is best to change and when to change.

We ensure you maximize tax deductions and credits by implementing advanced tax and other financial techniques. For example, we may implement owner benefits and educate owners on how to utilize the benefits to lower taxes while simultaneously increasing wealth.

Decreasing tax is easy. But coordinating with benefits to maximize wealth while minimizing taxes is difficult and requires experience. We help prioritize the suite of advanced techniques to meet your unique needs.

We minimize the burden of ownership by handling some of the routine but critical tasks such as accounting and sometime payroll. We will also help owners systematize some of the critical procedures so they spend less time on them.

You can’t be completely removed. While we minimize your time in these areas, you must be involved. As the taxpayer, the government holds you responsible for the reporting and accuracy of all financial data. We report the information as we understand it and implement advanced techniques but you are expected to review the figures for reasonableness and accuracy.

Yes. We work with them all. The benefit of using GFG is that we have experience in both compliance and investment management (via our sister company Grigg Wealth Management) of all plans. We understand what is needed to start, use, tax advantage of tax benefits from, increase wealth with, and maintain the high compliance standards of all plans.
Some of the common plans we routinely work with are:

Group and solo-401k plans
Mega Back-Door 401k Plans
Defined Benefit Plans
Bundled Defined Benefit Plans and solo-401K Plans
SEP IRAs and SIMPLE IRAs
Traditional and Roth IRAs
Money Purchase Plans
Cash Balance Plans

We will work with you to determine which plan is best for your unique situation.

Things to consider include, but are not limited to:

How much profit do you have?

Have you created a budget to determine how much available cash there is to fund the plan?

What does your personal tax return show and how much tax will you save to offset funding of the plan? Since an S-corporation is a flow-through entity, the tax benefits of most retirement plans will be controlled by the personal return.

What is your retirement time horizon?

Do you want loan provisions to create a self-lending tool?

Brian Grigg offers investment and wealth management planning advice via Grigg Wealth Management. This is a separate company for legal reasons. See www.griggwealthmanagement.com. We typically complete the tax reporting and manage the investments of our clients.

Yes. If the SEP-IRA permits non-SEP contributions, you can make regular IRA contributions (including IRA catch-up contributions if you are age 50 and older) to your SEP-IRA. The amount you can contribute is limited to the annual Traditional IRA limits issued by the IRS.

Comment: The amount of the regular IRA contribution that you can deduct on your income tax return may be reduced or eliminated due to your contribution to the SEP plan.
Source: IRS