About the firm

The firm was formed to answer a specific problem. At regional and local accounting firms, including independent firms affiliated with national networks, the client obligations are the same as at a national firm, but the state and local tax function is frequently one person. That person is also carrying the federal return, the provision, the notices that continue to arrive, and a filing deadline in a week. The questions that reach a specialist from that seat are rarely the most technical ones; they are tactical and urgent, and they compound quickly when nobody has the time to look at them. The same is true inside multistate companies, where state and local tax is one line on one person's job description. This is the work most easily deferred by a department of one, which is why it tends to surface as a crisis rather than a task, especially when it involves a trust tax like sales and use tax.

G&G does this work directly, the tactical and the technical, for companies with a multistate footprint and for the firms that serve them. The firm works as an extension of the client's existing tax function, engaged on retainer or by project, delivered at senior level without handoff to junior staff. All work is performed in the United States by the firm; client data is secured and maintained in the United States, under the firm's direct control, with no offshore access.

Edvin Givargis has practiced state and local tax since 2008, after beginning in 2006 in federal partnership compliance. He has advanced through manager, senior manager, principal, and partner at national and regional firms, where he assisted the internal technical functions other practitioners turn to when a question resists resolution. That work builds a particular skill: knowing how to take a position when the authority is genuinely thin, and how to document it so it holds.

Controversy has been constant, through audit, protest, appeal, settlement, and refund claim before the California Franchise Tax Board, the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration, the Office of Tax Appeals, and the equivalent authorities and appeal forums in other states. California residency is a recurring subject of the practice, and one he has taught and presented on at length.