CPA for real estate investors & agents · Northern Arizona
Altius is a tax and accounting firm for real estate investors, flippers, and agents in Sedona, Flagstaff, and across Northern Arizona. Dealer status, 1031s, short-term rentals, commission income — we handle the decisions that get made long before closing.
Licensed CPA · Fully remote · Clients in every time zone
Lumpy income is normal. Being unprepared for it isn't.
What a sale actually costs you in tax, while you can still do something about it.
Entity, holding period, and structure set so profit isn't taxed as ordinary income by accident.
Every property tracked separately, so you know which ones actually made money.
The problem
By the time a deal closes, the structure is set, the holding period is fixed, and the exchange window has started running. Most accountants meet the transaction in March, when every lever has already been pulled. These are the three conversations we have most.
Buy, renovate, sell, repeat and the IRS may treat you as a dealer — which makes the profit ordinary income, subject to self-employment tax, with no capital gain rates and no 1031. Most people find out after the second flip, not before the first.
Commissions, a rental, and a flip in the same LLC — or no entity at all. The right structure depends on what each property is for, and it has to be decided going in. Restructuring after the fact is expensive and sometimes impossible.
Whether your rental losses are passive or can offset other income comes down to average stay length and material participation — tests most owners have never heard of. Get it right and it's one of the largest deductions in the code. Get it wrong and the losses just sit there.
You know what a property is worth to the dollar. You should know what it costs you in tax before you sign, not after.
Who you're working with
A professional endurance athlete earning over $250,000 — irregular income, sponsorships, no entity, no retirement plan, and an accountant they saw once a year. Different industry, identical problem to a producing agent or an investor with a few doors.
By the time most accountants get involved, every decision that could have saved you money is already made.
I'd rather be in the conversation before the launch and before the entity election, when it still counts.
I work with real estate — investors, flippers, and agents. It means I already know the questions before you ask them.
Erik Oswald, CPA — Founder, Altius
Bookkeeping and taxes are the 2 things I hate the most about running a business. I just needed someone to take care of it and get it done WELL! He found me deductions I was missing and helped me restructure my business to cut my tax bill almost in half.
Andres Rodriguez-Story — Agency ownerErik approached my tax situation with eagerness and a problem solving attitude. I felt he was not only here to help me file but to save me as much money as possible. This was unlike my experience in meeting with other accountants. Erik really set a new standard.
Hunter Hicks — Realtor, Northern ArizonaThe plan
Tell us what you sell, roughly what you're bringing in, and how your books are set up now. We walk through all three plans together and land on the one that fits — including saying so if that's a smaller one than you expected.
In your first 90 days we clean up the books, review your entity and payroll setup, and build a tax projection for the year. You come out of it knowing your number and what to set aside each month.
Monthly books, quarterly planning calls, estimates calculated before every deadline, and your return filed at year end. A real person on email who answers in a day — not a portal that opens in February.
What's at stake
Run your numbers
A rough number in about ten seconds. No email required and nothing gets sent anywhere.
Commissions plus deal profit, minus everything you spend to earn it, before paying yourself. Agents commonly land between 50% and 75%; investors vary far more.
Revenue is only part of it. These are the things that actually change how much work your books are — and there are a few more we'd cover on a call.
Estimated annual self-employment tax savings
From electing S-corp status, after the added cost of payroll and a second return. Before income tax, which you owe either way.
Want these numbers checked against your actual return? That's the Tax Blueprint.
This is an estimate, not advice or a quote. It assumes a reasonable salary set at 45% of net profit, a Social Security wage base of $184,500, and roughly $900/yr in added payroll and filing costs — all figures that change annually and vary by situation. Self-employment tax is federal, so your state doesn't change the savings, though it does change what you should set aside. Your actual reasonable compensation is determined individually and is the single most scrutinized number in an S-corp. We'll work through it properly on a call.
Start here
Send us your last return and whatever you own or are about to buy. Two weeks later you get a written plan: how each property should be held, what dealer status means for you, where a 1031 or cost segregation actually pays, and what you're overpaying today — plus 90 minutes together going through it line by line.
No retainer and no obligation afterward. Plenty of investors take the blueprint, implement it themselves, and we never speak again. That's a fine outcome.
Our guarantee: if we don't find you at least what the blueprint cost, you don't pay for it.
What you get
If you start a monthly plan within 90 days, the full $1,000 comes off your onboarding fee.
Already have an accountant?
This is the reason most investors stay with someone they\'ve long outgrown — not loyalty, just the assumption that moving mid-year is a mess. It isn\'t, and waiting until January means another year of decisions made without advice.
We send the records request on your behalf. Most handoffs happen entirely between accountants, and yours never has to become a conversation.
Switching in June means we can still change the outcome on this year's deals. Switching in February means we're just reporting them.
They're the normal starting point. Cleanup is part of onboarding, quoted up front, and we've yet to see a set of books that shocked us.
We pick up where they left off. Nothing already filed gets redone, and nothing already paid for gets billed again.
Before you book
It depends on whether the IRS considers you a dealer — someone holding property primarily for sale rather than investment. Frequency, intent, how you market, and how you finance all factor in. If you're a dealer, the profit is ordinary income subject to self-employment tax, with no long-term capital gain rates and no 1031 available. It's the single most expensive classification in real estate tax and most people never have the conversation.
Sometimes — and it's one of the largest planning opportunities in the code. It turns on average guest stay and whether you materially participate, which are specific tests with specific record-keeping behind them. This matters enormously in Sedona and Flagstaff, where a lot of owners qualify and don't know it, or assume they qualify and don't.
Often, but not always — and the answer differs for a long-term hold, a flip, and a short-term rental. There's a real cost to each entity in filings and admin, so the structure should follow what the property is for, not a rule of thumb someone posted online. We'll map it property by property.
If you haven't closed, no. Exchange timelines, installment sale structuring, and the timing of the sale itself are all still live before closing and mostly dead after. This is the call worth making early — even if you're not a client, it's the one where we can actually change the number.
Yes. Commission income has its own set of problems: entity choice past a certain production level, quarterly estimates on income that arrives in bursts, and a long list of deductions that go unclaimed. Plenty of our agent clients also own a property or two, which is where the two sides of this meet.
We don't do audits, appraisals, or legal work, and we don't sell investments or insurance. If you need any of those we'll point you somewhere good. Everything in your plan's scope is covered by the flat fee, including the questions you send between calls.
That's most first conversations, and it's usually a sign the portfolio grew faster than the admin did. Cleanup is scoped and quoted as part of onboarding so you know the cost before you commit, and it's one-time — once the books are current, keeping them current is the easy part.
Your fee is locked for the year. We'll adjust your reserve target and quarterly estimates right away, because those need to reflect reality, and we'll talk about the fee at your annual review — never as a surprise line on an invoice.
Fifteen minutes, no pitch deck. Bring your last return and whatever you own or are about to buy, and you\'ll leave with something useful either way.
