Phillip Zagotti, Attorney and CPA

Two licenses, one practice

Phillip brings more than 25 years of combined experience in law, public accounting, and forensic accounting. Before turning to law full time he spent years as a controller, including a role in which he helped scale a company from roughly $10 million to $120 million in revenue across 24 locations, and he co-founded Zagotti & Burdette CPA, LLC, where he advised business owners, trustees, and individual taxpayers on compliance, planning, and controversy work for several years. That operational background shapes the practice: he has sat on the client’s side of the table, built the financial statements the other side reads, and testified about them as an expert.

His business experience runs through areas most attorneys only read about. He has advised multiple franchisees, including owners of failed franchises facing personal guaranties, helped a company franchise its own concept, and helped a restaurant franchisor go public. He has done substantial forensic accounting in high-asset divorce cases on referral from family law attorneys, and he has defended creditors against preference and avoidance claims brought by liquidating trustees in large retail bankruptcies. He also helped LegalZoom build its tax and bookkeeping offering.

The California practice

California is where Phillip’s law license lives, and the California practice is the firm’s broadest. On the tax side it covers the Franchise Tax Board’s protest and Office of Tax Appeals process, CDTFA sales tax and EDD payroll tax audits, and the residency and sourcing questions that follow people who leave the state, alongside the IRS work the firm does everywhere. On the planning side it covers California living trusts and the probate-avoidance and Proposition 19 issues that drive them, entity formation under California’s franchise tax rules, and the purchase and sale of California businesses. On the bankruptcy side it covers Chapter 7, Chapter 13, and Subchapter V in the Riverside Division and the rest of the Central District, with the tax-discharge analysis that only a tax practitioner can run. The practice is anchored in the Inland Empire and delivered statewide by phone, video, and secure portal.

Author

Books written for the people who have to live with the problem

Phillip writes for business owners, trustees, and taxpayers, not for other lawyers. The books translate federal rules into plain English and practical decisions, and the same approach runs through every page of this site.

Taxed: A Taxpayer’s Guide to Tax Defense and Resolution

What the IRS notices mean, what the agencies can and cannot do, and how each resolution tool actually works, written for the taxpayer rather than the professional. Co-authored with Ashley Burdette.

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Trusted: The Essential Guide for Trustees

A plain-English manual for the family member who just became a trustee: duties, notices, accounting, distributions, and the tax returns nobody warned them about. Co-authored with Ashley Burdette.

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The Small Business Disaster Survival Guide

Written in the first weeks of the pandemic to explain the CARES Act relief programs to small business owners, with an early warning that the applications were sworn statements the Justice Department would enforce. Co-authored with Effrossini Simpson and Mary Brannon.