Private Company Practice

One firm for your business, your family, and the tax strategy connecting them

Privately held company owners pay tax on the seams between advisors. We close those seams. Your entity return, your personal return, your family wealth strategy, and the planning between them, handled by one team that already knows the full picture.

  • CPAs on Staff
  • CPA + JD Tax Partner
  • Extended Hours & Weekends
  • Personalized Attention
  • 20+ Years Corporate Tax
  • 1,000+ Clients
Schedule a Free Consultation (408) 383-9870

No commitment. 60 minutes. We cover the business and the owner, not just one or the other.

Highly rated on Google

Most privately held business owners have a separate CPA for the business, a different CPA for their personal return, maybe a financial advisor who does not talk to either one, and nobody in the room who sees the full picture. Every year there are distributions that could have been structured differently, K-1 items that do not carry through to the personal return correctly, and wealth decisions that happen in isolation from the tax consequence. The cost is real, even when it is invisible.

Silicon Valley Tax now offers an integrated private company practice for owners who are done with fragmented advice. The practice is led by Alfonso Nunez, Senior Tax Partner, who brings 20+ years of corporate and international tax experience, a CPA license, and a law degree to the engagement. Al has spent his career helping business owners and high-net-worth individuals see the business and the family as one financial picture, then build the tax strategy around that reality.

This is not unit-priced compliance work. It is a relationship engagement where your entity return, your personal return, and the planning between them are handled by the same team, in the same conversation, all year.

What We Offer

Three integrated services, one unified engagement

Integrated Business + Owner Tax

Your entity return and your personal return run as a single coordinated engagement, not two separate files that never talk to each other. K-1 items reconcile to your 1040 without a hand-off error. Basis gets tracked. Distribution decisions get made with the full tax picture in front of us, not after the fact. For unit-priced compliance on either side, see entity tax preparation and individual tax preparation.

1120, 1120S, and 1065 entity returns coordinated with owner 1040
K-1 to 1040 reconciliation, at-risk and passive activity tracking
Stock and debt basis tracking for S-corp shareholders and partners
Distributions vs. wages optimization and reasonable compensation strategy
Year-round planning cadence, not just April filing
Estimated tax coordination across business and personal income
Tax partner and business owner reviewing entity and personal return documents together

Family Wealth + Succession Planning

For most privately held company owners, the business is the largest asset on the balance sheet. The retirement plan, the estate plan, and the succession plan all live in the shadow of that business value. We coordinate across all of them so the decisions reinforce each other instead of working at cross purposes.

Retirement plan design for owners: defined benefit plans, mega-backdoor Roth strategies
Section 1202 QSBS qualification planning for C-corp founders approaching liquidity
Annual exclusion gift planning and lifetime exemption usage strategy
Intra-family loans, GRATs, and trust structures for second-generation transfers
Coordination with your estate attorney and wealth advisor (or a referral to one)
Buy-sell agreement tax implications and valuation methodology input
Family business owners in discussion with tax advisor about succession and wealth planning

Strategic Tax Consulting

Discrete engagements for specific high-stakes tax questions. The issues that do not fit neatly into the annual return but carry real dollar consequences: restructuring, method changes, credits, IRS controversy. We also coordinate with the year-round planning available through our tax planning and strategy practice.

Accounting method changes (Form 3115) and Section 174 R&E capitalization optimization
R&D tax credit analysis and documentation (Section 41)
Entity restructuring: S-corp to C-corp, LLC to S-corp election timing, choice of entity for new ventures
M&A tax planning: asset vs. stock, Section 338(h)(10) elections, purchase price allocation
Multi-state nexus, apportionment, and state tax exposure analysis
IRS notice response, examination representation, and controversy resolution
Senior tax partner reviewing complex tax strategy documents for a privately held company

Who Leads This Practice

Meet Alfonso Nunez

Alfonso Nunez, Senior Tax Partner at Silicon Valley Tax, CPA and JD specializing in private company and international tax

Alfonso Nunez, CPA, JD

Senior Tax Partner, Silicon Valley Tax

JD, William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada Las Vegas. CPA. 20+ years corporate and international tax experience.

"Working in large firm environments taught me to look at a private-company client's business and family as one financial picture, not two separate engagements that happen to share an owner. The tax opportunity almost always lives in the connection between them, not inside either one alone."

Foundation

Al holds a CPA license and a JD from the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. The combination matters for private company work: the accounting credential gives him the technical depth to read a business's financial architecture, and the legal training shapes how he thinks about structure, documentation, and the arguments that hold up under scrutiny. He has spent more than 20 years putting both to work in complex tax matters for business owners and high-net-worth individuals.

Large-Firm Experience

Al's career includes serving as Managing Director at Andersen Tax in San Francisco and Partner at RSM US LLP, two of the largest tax advisory firms in the country. That background gave him exposure to the full range of corporate and international tax issues that privately held companies run into as they grow: cross-border structures, multi-state footprint, M&A planning, executive compensation, and IRS controversy at the most complex level. He brings that institutional depth to Silicon Valley Tax, where it is applied directly to each client relationship rather than distributed across a large engagement team.

Focus Areas

Al's practice centers on M&A tax planning, IRS controversy, and complex tax matters for business owners and high-net-worth individuals. He is the person you want in the room when a transaction is on the table, when the IRS sends a notice, or when the question is too complicated to answer with a standard form and a line of software. He works alongside Cooper Hathaway and the rest of the Silicon Valley Tax team so that clients in the private company practice get a coordinated picture across all of their tax work, not a specialist who only sees one piece of it.

When to Engage

If you recognize one of these situations, the conversation is overdue

Your business is most of your net worth

When the business is the asset, the business tax return and your personal tax return are not two separate problems. The decisions in one create the numbers in the other. A team that sees both is not a luxury, it is how you stop leaving money in the wrong places.

You are a founder approaching a liquidity event

QSBS exclusion, option exercise timing, lockup period planning, and the interaction between a large capital gain and everything else on your personal return need a quarterback who already knows your structure. That work starts before the term sheet, not after it closes.

Your business is generating cash you do not need to live on

Whether to retain earnings at the entity level, distribute them, invest them through a retirement plan, or redeploy them is a tax decision before it is a financial one. Getting the sequencing right requires knowing your full picture, not just the entity's books.

You have family in the business

Compensation arrangements between family members, equity transfers to children, and succession timing all carry tax consequences that compound over years. The right structure often looks obvious in hindsight. The wrong one is expensive to fix. Plan early.

You are tired of explaining your business to your personal CPA every year

And explaining your personal situation to your business CPA. When nobody holds the whole picture, nobody can ask the right question. The cost of that gap shows up in the tax you pay, not in any invoice.

You want a wealth advisor your tax team actually talks to

If your financial advisor and your tax team are not in the same conversation, the investment decisions and the tax decisions will contradict each other. We coordinate directly with your wealth advisor, or we can refer you to one we work with regularly.

How It Works

One engagement, built around your business calendar

  1. 1

    Free 60-minute discovery

    Intentionally longer than the standard 30-minute consultation, because the full picture across business, owner, and family takes time to understand correctly. We come to that call with questions about structure, ownership, and where the seams between your current advisors actually are. You leave with a clear sense of what the gaps are costing you.

  2. 2

    Integrated scope of work from Silicon Valley Tax

    One engagement letter covering your business return, your personal return, your planning cadence, and your advisory hours. Not three separate agreements with three separate billing cycles. The scope is defined upfront so there are no surprises and no gaps in coverage.

  3. 3

    Quarterly cadence built around your business

    Year-end tax planning in Q4 before the numbers are locked. Post-K-1 reconciliation in Q1 when the partnership or S-corp returns are finalized. A mid-year provisioning check-in in Q3 to catch estimated tax issues early. And year-round on-demand advisory when a decision cannot wait for the next scheduled call.

  4. 4

    Direct line to your tax partner, not a rotating staff

    You work with Al, not a junior associate who was staffed to your file this year and will be off it next year. The partner who knows your business, your family structure, and your history is the person who picks up when you call. That continuity is part of the service, not a premium add-on.

Stop explaining your business to two different CPAs

Schedule a free 60-minute discovery with our Private Company Practice team in San Jose. We will map the full picture across your business, your personal return, and your family wealth situation, then show you where the fragmented approach is costing you.

No commitment. No hourly surprises. Scoped engagement defined upfront.

Schedule a Free Consultation (408) 383-9870
Ready to talk? Free 60-minute discovery, no obligation. Schedule a Free Consultation (408) 383-9870