Contact

Michael Dallo, CPA, J.D., LL.M.

Dallo Law Group, APC

2150 Fourth Avenue

San Diego, CA 92101

619-795-8000

www.dallolawgroup.com

"While it is tempting to be a ‘one-stop shop,’ I purposely focused my practice on tax controversy matters. My highly skilled staff could easily provide bookkeeping, tax preparation, or entity incorporation services and leave it at that, but I did not want to distract from our core strengths. In doing so, we have set ourselves apart as true tax controversy experts,” says Michael Dallo, CPA, J.D., LL.M, founder, principal attorney, and CEO.

Founded 10 years ago, the firm’s typical clients are individuals and small businesses with complex or high-stakes tax issues or problems and companies impacted by COVID-19 government orders seeking significant tax refunds from the IRS under the CARES Act Employee Retention Credit Program.

Many of the firm’s attorneys are also licensed CPAs or have extensive tax and accounting backgrounds. In addition to being skilled and effective advocates, they have the technical knowledge needed for effective and robust tax representation.

This extensive tax controversy expertise paid off when the firm represented a young mother/entrepreneur who had a passion to prevent drowning and making swimming lessons accessible for all Californians. She formed a company to match up independent swim instructors with families for private lessons at the family home or other accessible pools. Her passion and commitment to her business resulted in expansion to many states outside of California and she had nearly 5000 potential swim instructors seeking opportunities to connect with potential clients through her. The EDD audited and assessed nearly $200,000 of back taxes and would have required her to put all instructors on her payroll—a tremendous burden that threatened to shut down her business. Dallo Law Group appealed the assessment and won a full reversal at the CUIAB level. The victory was of such a profound precedential impact that EDD appealed the ruling to the Board of Appeals. The firm won again at that level. Because of their advocacy, the attorneys protected this young woman from overly aggressive tax authorities and ensured she would be able to operate her business and provide for her family. 

The Triple Threat

Dallo earned two bachelor's degrees from the University of San Diego—Bachelor of Accountancy and a Bachelor of Business Administration (Finance Emphasis)—and graduated magna cum laude in the top ten percent of his class. He attended law school and obtained his juris doctor from the University of San Diego where he graduated magna cum laude, order of the coif (top ten percent of his class). He then went on to obtain his Master of Laws in Taxation (LL.M.) from NYU Law—the most renowned tax program in the nation. He started his career as a CPA working in the tax department of a San Diego based multi-national Fortune 500 Company, where he was an integral part of the tax team. He has also worked at the Tax Division of the United States Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. He soon realized a passion for tax advocacy, which solidified his desire to become a professional advocate for people and organizations needing such specialized services. Seeing that there were few law firms dedicated to tax advocacy and controversy, he started his own firm immediately upon graduating from NYU Law.

A personal tragedy added impetus to his drive. While finishing his last year of law school, he unexpectedly lost his brother, Branden. “During the lowest and most difficult point of my life, my passion for tax and the law was my driving force in helping me not only finish school, but graduate at the top of my class. My brother always believed in me, and he was and continues to be a driving force in my conviction, passion, and hard work,” Dallo says.

The triple threat title applies to Dallo’s expertise as an aggressive and committed legal advocate, a CPA, and a tax professor teaching at the University of San Diego in the Business and Law School. These professional “hats” give Dallo a unique perspective on handling the often-complex cases handled by his office. He says, “most tax controversy firms focus on the past mistakes that are at issue with the current audit or collections matter without regard to the client’s future business operations. Our approach to resolving tax controversies, while including strong advocacy, also involves counseling taxpayers to ensure continued tax compliance in the future. We strive to have no returning clients—once we solve a tax problem, our goal is to ensure the taxpayer will not have any issues in the future.”

Speaking the Language

Dallo speaks four languages fluently: English, Spanish, Arabic, and Chaldean-Aramaic. He has studied and worked in Paris, Barcelona, Hong Kong, Madrid, and Rio de Janeiro to understand the tax field in many different capacities. “Knowing and understanding diverse languages is a great asset because as a linguist you have to listen not only to what is said, but also how it is said and what is actually meant. It’s a very nuanced skill, but a very valuable one for an attorney,” Dallo says.

Accounting is also a language, he says. “We can’t stress enough the importance of having an attorney-CPA do this work. Having the administrative background in IRS procedure and the financial literacy to understand a tax return is invaluable. This combination provides the proper and necessary tools to advocate and defend our clients before the IRS and state taxing agencies. Accounting is the language of a tax return and law is the language of negotiation. Both are necessary in my practice.”

Being fluent in that language is a significant advantage for the firm’s expanding client list. Tax problems are scary for the individual person or organization involved, but also for attorneys not experienced in the multiple disciplines in play. Dallo Law Group’s attorneys understand small business owners. They have a policy to not judge their clients and to offer a safe place for clients to be open about their past mistakes. They understand the challenges of operating a business and keeping up with tax filing and payment compliance. Their goal is always to ensure a fair resolution of any tax problems resulting from past mistakes and to make future compliance easy.

“Our attorneys, while highly intelligent and skilled in tax law and advocacy, are also kind. Our approach to tax controversy cases is to provide a calm and safe place for individuals and business owners to resolve tax problems,” Dallo says.

For example, the firm represented a client who received a bill from the IRS for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Their small business had been audited without the firm’s knowledge and the IRS disallowed all deductions. This liability would have wiped out the company and ruined the family's life. The taxpayers endured many life and business challenges during those years and were forced to close the business. Recreating the pieces needed to fight the IRS was a significant challenge. The attorneys used their CPA skills to substantiate the deductions despite a lack of accounting records, and then used their attorney skills to defend and advocate for their client. In the end, they convinced the IRS to abate all the tax, remove all penalties, and were able to get a refund back to the clients.

Dallo says, “The pillar of our firm is framed and finished by the skills, continued education, commitment, creativity and perseverance of our qualified attorneys and employees individually and collectively. This becomes the solid foundation on which our partnering clients build their trust and continue to honor us with their confidence.”