The Law Office of Elizabeth Gonsalves

The Law Office of Elizabeth Gonsalves is a Los Angeles-based firm focused on tax services and tax law, with a practice oriented toward helping individuals and small businesses understand and reduce their California property tax burdens. Elizabeth's approach is client-focused, which means she takes time to explain the assessment system, the appeal timeline, and the realistic range of outcomes before anyone commits to moving forward. She's worked with homeowners, landlords, and small business property owners across Los Angeles who found the county assessment process frustrating or confusing. Her background in California tax law means she can identify issues that aren't always obvious, including incorrectly calculated supplemental assessments, miscategorized property uses that inflate tax rates, and cases where outdated comparable data drove an inflated base year value. Her 4.5 rating reflects solid work and genuine client engagement, with a few notes about the inherent unpredictability of county timelines.

Elizabeth Gonsalves offers property tax appeal services for homeowners, residential landlords, and small commercial property owners in Los Angeles County. She handles assessment reviews, formal appeals before the Assessment Appeals Board, Proposition 8 decline-in-value filings, and supplemental assessment challenges for clients who recently bought, built, or renovated property. Her tax law practice also covers state and federal income tax matters for individuals and small businesses, including tax planning around property sales, installment sale arrangements, and capital gains strategies. She advises clients on the tax side of estate planning that involves real property, including the reassessment implications of transfers into trusts or to heirs. For small business clients, she handles business property statement issues and can challenge personal property assessments on equipment and fixtures that the assessor has overvalued. This is an area that many property tax attorneys overlook, but it can represent meaningful savings for businesses with significant equipment or tenant improvement assets. She also provides general tax representation for clients dealing with California Franchise Tax Board audits and payment plan negotiations related to back taxes on property income.

Elizabeth starts with a no-pressure consultation to look at your assessment notice and talk through what's driving the number. She'll ask about your purchase date, purchase price, and any changes to the property since you bought it. That conversation usually makes clear pretty quickly whether an appeal has strong merit, modest merit, or isn't worth pursuing given the effort. If an appeal makes sense, she prepares the filing, gathers comparable sales and supporting documentation, and handles all county correspondence on your behalf. She'll keep you updated at each stage rather than leaving you to wonder where things stand. For clients going through the full Assessment Appeals Board process, she prepares a written case file and represents you at the hearing. For Proposition 8 claims and direct assessor negotiations, the process is faster and less formal. She's upfront about the fact that the county backlog can make residential appeals a multi-year process, and she'll tell you honestly if a case is likely to settle versus needing a full hearing. Her goal is a result worth the time invested, not just an appeal filed for its own sake.

The Law Office of Elizabeth Gonsalves primarily serves clients in Los Angeles County, including neighborhoods across the city of Los Angeles, Pasadena, Glendale, Burbank, Long Beach, and surrounding communities. She also works with clients in San Bernardino County and Riverside County for property tax and income tax matters. Small business tax clients can be served remotely for California Franchise Tax Board and IRS matters regardless of location.