Ben-Cohen Law Firm, PLC

Focus and practice areas

Tax controversy is the whole of what this Los Angeles firm does. It represents individuals and businesses in disputes with the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Justice, the California Franchise Tax Board, and other taxing authorities. That work spans the audit, appeal, and litigation stages, and it reaches both civil and criminal matters.

On the civil side, the firm handles tax audits, tax appeals, and tax litigation. An audit is the examination of a return, an appeal is the internal review that follows a disputed result, and litigation is the court stage that opens when the two sides cannot agree. On the criminal side, the firm handles criminal tax defense and what it calls eggshell audits. Collection defense, residency audits, and employment tax disputes fill out the areas the firm names on its own pages.

Where the firm handles matters

The firm takes federal cases to the U.S. Tax Court and to other federal courts. The Tax Court is the venue where a taxpayer can challenge an IRS bill before paying it, which is one reason lawyers in this field track its deadlines closely. On the state side, the firm appears before the California Franchise Tax Board, the State Board of Equalization, and the Employment Development Department.

A single tax dispute can move between these forums, and a client may face more than one authority in the same year. Alongside hearings and trials, the firm assists with voluntary disclosures, offshore asset matters, innocent spouse relief, and statute of limitations questions. In my opinion, the breadth here reads as practical: each item maps to a real situation a taxpayer can land in.

How the team is built

Ben-Cohen Law Firm lists five attorneys: Pedram Ben-Cohen, Tongzhou Li, Mindy Meigs, Lesley Sive, and Negeen Ben-Cohen. The firm describes itself as a boutique practice, which fits a group of this size working inside one area of law. All five lawyers work within that single tax focus, so a client deals with people who spend their days on the same kind of file.

Pedram Ben-Cohen is the principal, and he holds two credentials that carry weight in tax work. He is an attorney and a Certified Public Accountant. That pairing matters because tax disputes often turn on accounting questions as much as legal ones, and one adviser who reads both sides can spare a client the cost and friction of hiring two. For a criminal or offshore matter, that dual training lets the same person read the numbers on a return and the law that governs them.

The firm states that his earlier work includes two international tax defense firms and the Tax Division of the U.S. Attorney's Office. The Tax Division handles federal tax cases for the government, so time there gives a lawyer a close view of how the opposing side frames and builds a case. The four other attorneys appear on the firm's roster within the same tax practice.

What a tax controversy involves

A federal audit begins with the IRS examining a return, and it can close there or move to an appeal handled inside the agency. When an appeal leaves the matter open, the dispute can go to the U.S. Tax Court, where a taxpayer contests a proposed deficiency before paying it. The firm works at each of these civil stages, and it also represents clients when the Department of Justice enters a case.

Criminal tax matters follow a separate track. An eggshell audit is a civil examination that carries hidden criminal risk, so the lawyer manages what gets disclosed while both exposures run at once. The stakes there are higher, since a criminal referral can follow a civil audit that goes badly. Voluntary disclosure programs give a taxpayer a route to correct past filings, and offshore asset matters bring in reporting rules that carry penalties of their own.

Collection defense comes after an assessment, when the IRS or a state agency moves to collect what it says is owed. Residency audits ask whether a person counted as a California resident for tax purposes in a given year, a question with real money behind it in a high-tax state. Employment tax disputes turn on how a business classifies and pays the people who work for it.

What the listing shows

As a reviewer, I read this as a focused tax practice led by someone who brings both a law license and a CPA credential to the work. The named practice areas stay consistent across the home page and the practice pages, which suggests the firm has settled on what it takes on. The client reviews carry the firm's PLC entity name, which lines up with the organization details in the site's own markup.

The site does not list a founding year, and it publishes those client reviews under the legal name Ben-Cohen Law Firm, PLC. For a prospective client, the concrete facts are these: a Los Angeles firm, five attorneys, and a practice that covers federal and California tax disputes at the audit, appeal, and litigation stages, civil and criminal. Its lawyers handle federal cases in the U.S. Tax Court and state matters before the California Franchise Tax Board, the State Board of Equalization, and the Employment Development Department.