New York IRS Tax Attorney

NY Tax Landscape

New York taxes personal income on a graduated scale that reaches 10.9% on the highest incomes, and New York City residents add a city income tax of up to 3.876% on top of it. The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance (DTF) is entirely separate from the IRS: it runs its own audit division, its own collections arm, and its own appeals process through the Division of Tax Appeals. A federal resolution with the IRS does not bind the DTF, and because the two agencies share audit results, an IRS adjustment routinely produces a New York assessment months later. The DTF's signature tool is the residency audit. Under the 183-day statutory-residency rule and the domicile test, the state challenges taxpayers who claim a move to Florida, Connecticut, or New Jersey while keeping a New York home, and it asks for cell-phone records, EZ-Pass logs, and credit-card data to prove where you actually were. New York also enforces harder than most states once a balance is final: it files tax warrants that operate like liens, levies wages and bank accounts, and can suspend the driver's license of a taxpayer who owes $10,000 or more in past-due state tax. Federal exposure follows the state's economy. Manhattan's financial-services industry draws IRS Large Business and International scrutiny of carried interest, Section 409A deferred compensation, and RSU timing; real-estate investors from Long Island to the Hudson Valley face examination of Section 1031 exchanges and passive-loss limits; and upstate manufacturers, medical practices, and contractors in Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo see payroll-tax audits and Trust Fund Recovery Penalty assessments against owners personally. New York's large immigrant and dual-national communities carry FBAR and FATCA obligations for accounts held abroad. Because IRS representation is federal, Segal, Cohen & Landis handles New York audits, appeals, Offers in Compromise, installment agreements, lien and levy releases, and Tax Court matters from Beverly Hills, coordinating the parallel DTF exposure that follows nearly every New York tax problem.