About
About Hunter Nottingham, JD, CPA
Two accounting degrees, a law degree, and nobody standing between you and the person preparing your return.
Two degrees, and why I have both
Accounting school teaches you how a return is assembled: which number belongs on which line, how the schedules feed the 1040, what the software is actually doing when it carries an amount off a K-1 onto Schedule E. Law school teaches you where those lines came from. A statute Congress wrote, a regulation Treasury wrote to interpret it, and a stack of Tax Court opinions arguing about what both of them meant.
I did the accounting at the University of Florida, a bachelor's and then a master's, and the law degree at Florida State. The questions worth having sit in the gap between the two. Where do I report this is an accounting question. Does this even qualify is usually a legal one.
What the law degree changes for a client
It means I read the primary source. When a situation lands near a threshold, whether a medical practice is a specified service trade or business inside the Section 199A phase-in range, or whether a long locum assignment has quietly moved someone's tax home under Section 162(a)(2), the answer is not in a software help article. It is in the statute, the regulations, and what the Tax Court has said about a similar set of facts.
It matters more when the IRS writes to you. A CPA can represent a client before the IRS under a power of attorney on Form 2848, so the notice, the examiner, and the correspondence come off your desk and onto mine. Most of those disputes turn on documentation and procedure rather than on being right in the abstract. That work has its own page.
It also helps me notice when a tax question is really a drafting question. Ownership percentages in an operating agreement, buy-sell language, a divorce decree that assigns a dependency claim: each one carries tax consequences, but the document comes first. On the credential itself, since it is the obvious question: the JD is a degree, not a law license, and I am not a practicing attorney. Every engagement here is a CPA engagement under my CPA license, so I am not your lawyer, and blurring that line would not do either of us any good.
Why the practice is one person
At a firm of any size, the person who takes your intake call is usually not the person who prepares the return, and the person who signs it is reviewing someone else's work. Detail falls out at every handoff. April is when you find out which detail.
There is no account manager here. I handle the first conversation, the complexity assessment, the preparation, the review, and the call in November when you want to know whether a Roth conversion makes sense before December 31. When you send a question, I am the one reading it.
The work that fills most of my year
Medical professionals are the largest share of the practice: employed physicians on a hospital or group W-2, private practice owners, and partners taking K-1s. Engineering is close behind. Both have their own pages, medical here and engineering here.
- A hospital-employed physician with moonlighting or locum 1099-NEC income and nothing withheld on it
- A dentist or practice owner running S-corp payroll and guessing at reasonable compensation
- A new partner holding a first K-1 and a distribution that withheld nothing
- An engineer moving between W-2 and contract work, filing in three or four states
- An owner whose books and tax return say two different things
- Someone with an IRS notice they have stopped opening
Why the fee comes out of a formula
I do not bill by the hour. An hourly clock pays me more for working slower and teaches you to think twice before asking a question, which is backwards, because the questions are the valuable part. Value-based pricing fails in the other direction. It sets the fee from what the firm believes the work is worth to you, so the number depends partly on what you look like you can pay.
My fee is flat and quoted in writing before any work starts. The number comes from a complexity score built out of countable things: income sources, states filed, schedules and forms required, entities involved, transaction volume, foreign accounts, how much prior-year cleanup is sitting there. Same inputs, same price, whoever you are. If the return turns out simpler or more complicated than intake suggested, the final price moves on that same scale and I show you the factor that changed. The model is written out in full here.
A CPA license is issued by a state, not by the country, so nobody is licensed in all fifty. National work is legitimate for a different reason: IRS practice rights are federal, and mobility rules let a licensed CPA work across state lines. I am based in Charlotte and work with clients around the country.
The tradeoffs, stated plainly
One person is a hard ceiling. If I do not have room to give a return the time it needs, I will say so rather than take it and get to it in May. If I am out for a week, nothing on your file moves. There is no bench. In the last stretch of filing season, replies come in batches between returns instead of the minute you send them.
There is also work I am not the right home for. Financial statement audits, large consolidated groups, and international transfer pricing need a firm with departments, and I will point you toward one. If your return is a single W-2 and the standard deduction, consumer software handles it correctly, and I will tell you that on the first call instead of quoting you for it. There is a whole page arguing against hiring me, which is the part of the site I am most confident about.
What happens to your file if something happens to me
The honest version of the one-person risk is not that I take a week off. It is March, a K-1 return due on the sixteenth, and I am in a hospital bed. Anyone handing a year of financial records to a sole practitioner should ask about that before they hand it over, so here is how the exposure actually breaks down.
Your documents are yours, and they are not stacked in a filing cabinet only I can open. They sit in the portal vault I run client work through, filed by tax year, and you can pull a folder down and give it to another preparer without rebuilding a year of paperwork from scratch. The deadline has a backstop too. Form 4868 for an individual return and Form 7004 for an entity push the filing date out, either one can be filed by someone other than me, and neither one extends the payment, which is the part people get wrong.
The third piece is coverage: who steps in, with what authority, and how you would hear about it. Ask that on the first call and you will get a specific answer rather than a reassuring one. It is a fair question to put to anyone running a practice alone, and that includes me.
How the client side actually runs
The client work runs through Tax Nucleus, a portal built by Tax Nucleus, LLC. Every return moves through five visible steps, engagement letter, questionnaire, tasks and questions, review and signature, then invoice, each one marked not started, in progress, or complete. You can see which step you are on instead of wondering whether anything is happening.
Documents live in a folder vault organized by tax year, with a record of who uploaded what and when, and they never travel as email attachments. There is also a research assistant inside it, Ask NucleI, which answers a tax question and cites its sources so you can expand them and check the answer. The public login is being finalized, so current clients still coordinate through the contact form. Here is what is in it.
I came over to Nottingham after being with another CPA for many years. The transition was very smooth, and I love the personal attention I get from Hunter.
Client Word
What clients say when I'm not in the room.
Three of them, in their own words.
Questions, answered plainly.
Do you actually do the work, or does it get handed off?
I do it. There is nobody here to hand it to. The intake conversation, the return itself, the review, and the signature are all mine, which is also the limit on how much work I can carry at once.
You are in Charlotte. Can you handle my return in another state?
Yes, and multi-state returns are ordinary work here. A CPA license comes from a state, but IRS practice rights are federal and mobility rules cover practice across state lines. Locum physicians, traveling engineers, and anyone who moved mid-year usually file in more than one state, and the number of states is one of the factors in the price.
Does the law degree mean I am getting legal advice?
No, and to be plain about it, a JD is a degree and not a law license. I am not a practicing attorney, and the engagement is a CPA engagement under my CPA license. What the degree changes is how I read a statute and how I handle a dispute with the IRS, not what I am licensed to do for you. When a matter genuinely needs an attorney, I will say so early and coordinate with one rather than improvise around it.
What happens to my return if you are seriously ill during filing season?
Your records stay reachable: they are in the portal vault, filed by tax year, and you can download a folder and hand it to another preparer. A filing deadline can be extended by Form 4868 or Form 7004, and that filing does not have to come from me, though an extension never moves the payment date. For who covers the practice and how that is documented, ask on the first call and you will get a specific answer.
The first conversation is free.
Tell me what's going on and I'll tell you plainly whether you need me.
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