What does a tax attorney do?

A tax attorney is not a more expensive version of your accountant. The confusion is understandable, and it costs people money every year.

If you have ever typed "tax attorney near me" into a search bar and then clicked away because the results were vague, this is the post you were looking for. The answer is specific, and it matters more in 2026 than it has in years.

A Tax Attorney Is Not a More Expensive CPA

Your CPA is excellent at what they do. They track your income, prepare your returns, and tell you what you owe. Some of the good ones will flag deductions you missed or suggest you restructure a business entity before year-end. That is valuable work. It is not legal advice.

The distinction is not semantic. When your CPA tells you how to report something, they are applying accounting standards and IRS guidance to your numbers. When a tax attorney tells you how to structure something, they are applying the law, analyzing risk, and giving you advice that is protected by attorney-client privilege. That privilege is not available with your CPA. If the IRS audits you and summons your accountant, your accountant can be compelled to testify about your conversations. Your attorney cannot.

This matters enormously when the stakes are high. A CPA can prepare a return. A tax attorney can defend one. A CPA can suggest an S-corp election. A tax attorney can tell you whether that election will hold up, what the IRS is likely to challenge, and how to document your position so it survives scrutiny. These are different services. Conflating them is one of the more expensive mistakes high earners make.

There is also the question of authority. Under 31 CFR § 10.3, attorneys are among the professionals authorized to practice before the IRS, which means they can represent you in audits, appeals, and collection proceedings. Your CPA has limited representation rights. Your tax attorney has full ones. When the IRS is involved, that distinction is the difference between having counsel and having a witness.

What a Tax Attorney Actually Does for You

The short answer: a tax attorney advises you on the legal dimensions of financial decisions, represents you when the government comes knocking, and builds structures that protect what you've built before a problem exists.

On the planning side, a tax attorney reviews entity structures, compensation arrangements, investment strategies, and major transactions with one question in mind: what does the law actually allow, and what does it allow you to keep? This is not the same as tax preparation. It happens before the return is filed, often before the transaction closes. The goal is to make decisions that are legally defensible, not just numerically convenient.

On the controversy side, a tax attorney represents you in IRS audits, appeals, and Tax Court proceedings. If you have received a notice of deficiency, a summons, or a letter suggesting criminal referral, a tax attorney is not optional. These are legal proceedings. Sending your CPA to an IRS audit is like sending your bookkeeper to a deposition. It communicates to the government that you do not understand the seriousness of what is happening.

Tax debt resolution is its own discipline. A tax debt attorney negotiates with the IRS on your behalf, whether that means an installment agreement, an offer in compromise, penalty abatement, or innocent spouse relief. The IRS is not a neutral party in these negotiations. They have experienced revenue officers whose job is to collect as much as possible. Having an attorney who knows the procedural rules, the statutory deadlines, and the negotiating posture the IRS responds to is not a luxury. It is the only rational response to the situation.

On the transactional side, a tax attorney reviews the tax consequences of mergers, acquisitions, real estate deals, and business sales. If you are selling a company, the difference between a stock sale and an asset sale can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax liability. That is a legal question before it is an accounting question. Your investment banker will not tell you this. Your CPA will tell you after the fact. Your tax attorney tells you before you sign.

When You Need a Tax Attorney, Not a Tax Preparer

The clearest signal is any situation where the IRS is already involved. An audit letter, a collection notice, a request for documentation — these are not administrative inconveniences. They are the beginning of an adversarial process, and you need someone who practices law, not someone who practices accounting.

The second signal is a transaction with significant tax consequences that has not yet closed. Selling a business. Taking on investors. Converting an LLC to a corporation. Receiving a large settlement. Exercising stock options. These are moments where the structure of the deal determines the tax outcome, and the tax outcome is determined by law. Waiting until after the transaction closes to ask a tax attorney what you should have done is one of the most common and most expensive mistakes in this income bracket.

The third signal is complexity that has outgrown your current team. You started with a CPA who was perfect for your first few years. Now you have a business, a rental portfolio, equity compensation, maybe a partnership interest, and income in multiple states. Your CPA is still filing the returns. But nobody is looking at the whole picture and asking whether the structure still makes sense. That is a tax attorney's job.

The fourth signal is anything that feels like it might be aggressive. If someone has told you about a strategy that sounds too good, or if you are already doing something and you are not entirely sure it would survive scrutiny, you need a privileged conversation with an attorney before you need anything else. Your CPA cannot give you that conversation. The privilege that protects what you say to your attorney does not extend to what you say to your accountant.

The Tax Landscape Just Changed. That Is Not a Coincidence.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed as part of the 2025 Budget Reconciliation process, made the TCJA individual rates permanent. The brackets you have been planning around — 10% through 37% — are not going away. That is a planning opportunity, and it is also a reason to revisit strategies that were designed around the assumption that rates would increase.

The SALT deduction cap increased to $40,000 for 2025, which matters significantly if you are in a high-tax state and you have been capped at the prior $10,000 limit. That cap reverts to $10,000 after 2029, which means the window for planning around it is finite. A tax attorney can tell you how to use it. Your CPA can tell you what you paid.

The QBI deduction phase-out for 2026 begins at $201,750 for single filers and $403,500 for married filing jointly. If your qualified business income puts you in or above that range, the deduction does not disappear automatically, but it does become a calculation that depends on your entity structure, your W-2 wages, and your depreciable property. Getting that calculation wrong costs money. Getting the structure wrong costs more.

The estate tax basic exclusion amount is $15,000,000 for 2026. If your estate is approaching that number, or if you have reason to believe it will, the planning window is now. Estate tax planning is almost entirely a legal exercise. It involves trusts, gifting strategies, entity structures, and valuations. It is not something your CPA designs. It is something your tax attorney designs and your CPA implements.

The AMT exemption for 2026 is $90,100 for single filers, phasing out at $500,000, and $140,200 for married filing jointly, phasing out at $1,000,000. If you are in the phase-out range, you are almost certainly paying more AMT than you need to, and the fix is structural, not arithmetic.

None of this is abstract. These numbers apply to your return, your entity, your estate. The question is whether anyone on your team is looking at them through a legal lens or just a tax preparation one.

The document is not the strategy. A return that accurately reports what happened is not the same as a structure designed to make the right things happen. One is compliance. The other is counsel. You need both, and they are not the same person.

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Delina works with founders, creators, and high earners who have outgrown their CPA's advice and need a tax attorney who will actually read their situation.

If you are ready to stop filing returns and start building a tax strategy that holds up, book a paid intake with Delina. This is not a free call. It is a focused, strategic session with an attorney who has read everything above and has specific opinions about your situation.