CPA Firm Office Locations

The Reed Corporation works with clients out of five metro markets: Austin, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, and New York City. Each of those cities sits in a different state tax environment, which is the whole reason our CPA firm office locations are organized the way they are. Federal rules are the same in all five, so a Schedule C sole proprietor in Miami and one in Chicago report business income on the same forms and pay the same self-employment tax. The 15.3 percent self-employment rate breaks down into 12.4 percent for Social Security up to the annual wage base and 2.9 percent for Medicare, and it applies to net earnings no matter which office you contact. You can read the federal baseline for the self-employed on the IRS pages for small businesses and self-employed taxpayers and for the self-employment tax schedule. The forms are national, the rates are national, and the due dates are national.

What changes from city to city is the state and local layer stacked on top of that federal base. Austin and Miami have no state personal income tax, so a freelancer in either place mostly plans around federal brackets, the standard deduction, and quarterly payments. Chicago sits in Illinois with a flat state rate near 4.95 percent, Los Angeles carries California’s high graduated rates and its own alternative minimum tax, and New York City adds a city income tax on top of the state figure. We keep one federal engine for every client and then attach the correct state module to it. That approach is cleaner and more honest than pretending a single generic answer fits people living in five very different places. It also means that when you move between two of these cities, we already understand both sides of the change.

Take a worked example so the difference is not abstract. A consultant nets 120,000 dollars for the year. Federal income tax and roughly 16,955 dollars of self-employment tax look identical whether the desk is in Austin or Manhattan, because both figures come straight off the federal return. But the New York City resident then owes New York State income tax plus a city tax near 3.876 percent, which can add well over 4,000 dollars that the Austin consultant never sees. That one number is the reason we anchor planning to the client’s actual location rather than to a building. Our tax strategy consulting team runs the multi-state math on numbers like these, and our individual tax return group prepares and files the returns that follow from it.

The common mistake we see is a client assuming a firm tied to one city cannot serve a move to another. People relocate from Los Angeles to Miami and think they must find a brand new accountant and start from scratch. They do not. What they need is a residency-change plan and correct part-year filings, which is a documentation exercise, not a reason to abandon a working relationship. Keep your business records in order, hand over the dates cleanly, and the transition is routine. As remote work keeps pulling people across state lines, having one team that already understands all five of these markets will save you a fresh onboarding every single time you move, and it keeps your filing history consistent from one year to the next.

Almost every engagement runs remotely now, and the tax rules do not care where your accountant physically sits. What matters for your return is where you live, where you earn, and where any entity you own is registered. We serve clients in Austin, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, and New York City through secure document exchange, video calls, and electronic signatures, so a Miami client and a Chicago client get the same service without anyone booking a flight. The federal filings are the constant across all of it. Every business owner still files the right federal return, whether that is a Form 1040 with a Schedule C or a partnership Form 1065, and everyone making money outside of withholding pays quarterly estimates using Form 1040-ES. None of that depends on your location.

Multi-state work is where remote service earns its keep. If you live in New York City but consult for a client based in Texas, your income is generally taxed where you live as a resident, and you may also pick up a nonresident filing in a state where you have a physical presence, property, or in-state work. A single actor might file in two or three states in one year without ever changing homes. We map all of that at the start of the engagement so nothing gets missed, then we coordinate withholding and estimates against every state that has a claim on your income. The four 2026 estimate dates are April 15, June 15, September 15, and January 15 of 2027, and we hit them the same way regardless of which office you consider your home base. Getting the sourcing right early is what prevents a scramble in April.

Here is a concrete case with dollars attached. A film editor lives in Los Angeles and takes a four-month gig physically in New York. Suppose 60,000 dollars of the year’s pay is earned during the New York work. New York taxes that portion as a nonresident, and California, as the state of residence, taxes the full amount but grants a credit for tax paid to New York so the same dollars are not fully taxed twice. Getting that credit right can be worth several thousand dollars, and it only works if both state returns are prepared together by people who can see the whole picture. Our tax strategy consulting group builds that plan and our individual tax return team files each state return so the credit actually lands.

The common mistake is treating each state as a separate, unrelated job and letting two different preparers work in isolation from each other. That is how people accidentally pay full tax twice or lose a resident credit they were entitled to. Clean records tied to dates and locations fix it, because the credit math depends on knowing exactly which dollars were earned in which state. If a client wants to walk through a messy multi-state year before the deadline, that is the moment to request a consultation so we can sort the sourcing while there is still time to adjust estimates. As careers keep getting more location-flexible, a remote-first firm that already tracks all five of these markets is the practical way to stay compliant everywhere at once instead of patching it together after the fact.

The short version is that the federal government sets one rulebook and each state writes its own on top of it. That is why the state layer looks so different across our CPA firm office locations even though the federal return barely changes from one city to the next. Austin sits in Texas and Miami sits in Florida, and neither state charges a personal income tax, so residents there plan almost entirely around federal brackets, the standard deduction, and quarterly payments. A business owner in either city still files federally and still pays self-employment tax reported on the self-employment tax schedule, and still tracks deductible costs the way Publication 535 describes. The absence of a state income tax does not remove any of the federal work, it just removes one bill from the stack.

Move to the higher-tax states and the picture shifts quickly. Illinois applies a flat rate near 4.95 percent to most income, so a Chicago resident can estimate the state hit fairly easily once the federal number is known. California, home to our Los Angeles clients, uses steep graduated brackets, taxes capital gains as ordinary income rather than at a preferential rate, and runs its own alternative minimum tax, so two people with identical federal returns can owe very different amounts to the state. New York City is the heaviest of the five because a resident pays New York State tax plus a city income tax near 3.876 percent on top of it. Same federal Form 1040, very different totals once you add the state and local pieces. The federal record itself, including reporting investment income on Schedule B, does not change.

Numbers make it concrete. Imagine 200,000 dollars of taxable income. In Miami or Austin the state income tax on that amount is zero. In Chicago the flat rate produces roughly 9,900 dollars of Illinois tax. In New York City the combined state and city bill on the same income can climb past 15,000 dollars once both rates apply. None of that changes the federal figure by a single cent, but it changes your take-home enough that where you live belongs at the center of any real plan. Our tax strategy consulting team quantifies that gap before you make a move, and our bookkeeping team keeps the underlying figures clean enough to rely on when the state asks questions.

The mistake we correct most often is copying a no-income-tax mindset from Texas or Florida onto California or New York. Someone moves from Miami to Los Angeles, keeps their withholding as if there were still no state tax, and gets a painful surprise the following April when the California balance comes due. Each state stands entirely on its own, and you have to plan for the one you actually live in, not the one you left. Keep your records matched to your residency dates and the return follows cleanly. As more clients split their time between two of these cities in a single year, understanding why the state layer differs is exactly what keeps a relocation from turning into an audit or an unexpected bill.

No. You do not need to live within driving distance of any single office to work with us. Because the practice runs remotely across Austin, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, and New York City, what determines your service is your tax situation, not your location relative to a building. A high-net-worth client in a suburb two hours from downtown Chicago gets the same treatment as one in the Loop. The federal filings are handled identically for everyone, whether you run an S corporation on Form 1120-S, a C corporation on Form 1120, or report rental income on Schedule E. Being close to a particular desk has nothing to do with the quality or the accuracy of the return we prepare. The technology carries the relationship, and it carries it well.

What we do map to your location is the state and local overlay. During onboarding we confirm your state of residence, any states where you own property or perform work, and any entity registrations, then we set your quarterly estimates and withholding accordingly. A client who lives in Miami but owns a rental in New York picks up a New York nonresident filing on that rental income while paying no Florida state income tax on anything. We line those two things up together so the pieces reconcile instead of contradicting each other. The federal estimate mechanics using Form 1040-ES stay the same in every market, and the way we track deductible rental costs under Publication 527 does too. Only the state return changes based on where the property sits.

Consider a real number. A landlord living in Austin nets 30,000 dollars from a Manhattan condo. Texas takes no state income tax, so the Austin side of the return is federal only, but New York taxes that 30,000 dollars of in-state rental profit as a nonresident, which might run around 1,700 dollars of New York tax before any credits. On the federal side the same rental is reported on Schedule E, and depreciation on the building can reduce the taxable profit in both places, so the two returns have to start from the same figure. Miss that New York filing entirely and the notice arrives a year later with penalties and interest attached to it, often for more than the original tax. Our individual tax return team catches the nonresident piece before it becomes a problem, and our tax strategy consulting team decides whether the property should sit inside an entity at all, which can change the answer and the paperwork that comes with it.

The common mistake is assuming out-of-state income is invisible because you do not physically live there. It is not invisible at all. States match property records and 1099 forms, so rental or wage income sourced to their state shows up on their radar whether or not you file. The fix is disclosing every state connection up front so nothing is a surprise, and keeping records that clearly show which dollars came from where. As remote arrangements let people own property and earn income across several of these five markets at once, a firm built to serve all of them from anywhere is what keeps you filing correctly no matter where you happen to settle down.

Start with where you actually live, because your state of residence usually drives the largest part of your tax bill, then add any state where you earn income or own property. You do not really pick an office in the sense of a building. You describe your footprint and we assign the right combination of federal and state work to match it. Someone splitting the year between Los Angeles and New York has two high-tax states in play and needs both handled by one team so the resident credit lines up correctly. Someone splitting between Miami and Austin has two no-income-tax states and a far simpler picture to manage. The federal core, from the Form 1040 to the quarterly estimated payments, stays identical either way, so the only real variable is the state layer we attach.

Service selection follows the same logic. If your issue is disorganized books, our bookkeeping team is the natural entry point. If it is a projection or an entity question, tax strategy is where you begin. If you are staring at an IRS notice, that is a different workflow again with its own steps. Business owners across all five markets share the same federal duties, including payroll taxes reported on Form 941 when they have employees and business structure choices explained on the IRS business structures page, so the service you need depends on the problem in front of you rather than the city on your mailing address. We slot the state layer in once we know where you sit and what you own.

Here is how the choice plays out with numbers. A creator earns 90,000 dollars and is deciding whether to call herself a Los Angeles client or a Miami client after a move. In California that income faces state tax that can exceed 5,000 dollars, plus the 800 dollar minimum LLC franchise tax if she formed an LLC there. In Florida the state income tax on the same 90,000 dollars is exactly zero. The right answer is not to guess which label sounds better, it is to confirm the actual residency date and file part-year returns in each state for the portion of the year she lived there. Our tax strategy consulting team runs that comparison side by side, and our bookkeeping team keeps the numbers audit-ready so the split holds up.

The mistake to avoid is choosing a state label for convenience rather than for facts. You cannot call yourself a Florida resident to sidestep California tax while your home, your car, and your daily life all stay in Los Angeles, because California will look at the substance of your situation and can challenge the claim. Residency is proven with real ties and clean records, not with a preference or a mailing address. As your ties spread across more of these cities over time, the smart move is to keep one firm that already knows all five, so that every filing, in every state, still fits together correctly the next year and the year after that.