Chris Grindy is the Bay Area tax man! He owns and operates Grindy Tax Service of San Jose, in the heart of Silicon Valley. The Grindy family has been doing taxes for Bay Area folks for going on 79 years – an incredibly long time for a family run business. In all those decades, they’ve learned a thing or two both about taxation but also what folks in the Bay Area really need from their tax preparation professionals.

We got things rolling with a discussion of the history of Enrolled Agents, and then we took a deep dive into a wide variety of tax questions I have – mostly surrounding real estate. We talked about issues that will be of interest to most Bay Area home owners – mortgage interest deduction, local and state tax deductions, depreciation, 1031 exchanges, vacation rentals – if it had to do with real estate and taxes, it was a question I wanted – and got – an answer on. If you’re a bay area home owner and are interested to know about where and how taxation intersects with real property, you will for sure want to listen to this episode.

We want to make a couple of clarifications on our conversation, regarding itemized vs. taking the standard deduction. The short answer is that you still need to compare Standard vs Itemized, for both Federal & California.

Regarding the pass through business deduction: there is a new Federal deduction for business owners of 20% of their net business income, adjusted for certain items.  This is to give business owners a rate closer to a regular corporation.