Los Angeles bookkeeper & QuickBooks accountant.

TechBrot provides Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor bookkeeping for Los Angeles businesses — monthly bookkeeping, cleanup, and QuickBooks management by a named bookkeeper on the same file every month. What sets Los Angeles apart is its own city tax layer: the Los Angeles City Business Tax (LABT), levied on gross receipts at rates that vary by business classification and requiring a Business Tax Registration Certificate (BTRC), plus Measure ULA, the city’s transfer tax on real-property sales above $5M. That sits on top of California’s $800 minimum franchise tax (owed to the FTB whether or not you profit), CDTFA sales/use tax (about 9.5% in the city of Los Angeles), and California’s AB5 worker-classification rules. We build awareness of all of it into your books, keep them CPA-ready, and coordinate with your CPA, who files. Fixed-fee against a written scope ($400–$2,500+/mo monthly; cleanup $1,500–$15,000+). Delivered remotely on QuickBooks Online or hosted Desktop. Independent firm — not affiliated with Intuit Inc.; does not file California or Los Angeles taxes.

Los Angeles is one of the few U.S. cities that runs its own gross-receipts business tax — and that single fact is what makes bookkeeping here its own discipline.

The Los Angeles City Business Tax (LABT) is calculated on gross receipts, not profit, at rates that vary by business classification, and nearly every business operating in the city must hold a Business Tax Registration Certificate (BTRC) and renew it annually with the Office of Finance. Layered on top is California’s structure: the $800 minimum franchise tax every LLC and corporation owes the Franchise Tax Board regardless of profit, an income-based LLC fee, CDTFA sales/use tax at roughly 9.5% in the city, and AB5, whose strict ABC test reclassifies many “contractors” as employees. And if you own or sell LA real property, Measure ULA adds a transfer tax on sales above $5M.

That is why out-of-state, software-only bookkeeping struggles here. If your books don’t track gross receipts the way the city classifies your business activity, the LABT becomes a guess. If a freelance editor, writer, or developer should have been a W-2 employee under AB5, you find out the expensive way. And LA’s production, agency, and entertainment economy is built on project work and pass-through spend, where revenue recognition decides whether your top line is real. TechBrot keeps a named bookkeeper on your file who knows these are the things that matter in this city — built into the monthly close, not the year-end scramble.

The result: books that reflect how a Los Angeles business actually runs — gross receipts tracked by LABT classification, sales tax reconciled to the CDTFA, contractor vs. employee handled cleanly, project and media spend booked correctly — reconciled monthly and handed to your CPA CPA-ready, so filing the city business tax, the franchise tax, and the income returns is fast and accurate.

In a city that taxes your gross receipts by classification and a state that bills $800 before you’ve made a dollar, the value isn’t in categorizing a transaction — it’s in knowing your LABT classification is right, your project margins are real after pass-through media spend, and your freelance crew won’t fail an AB5 test. That judgment is what a named Los Angeles bookkeeper brings, and what fractional-CFO advisory extends once the books are clean.