Alan Steger, currently works and resides in San Francisco, CA. He was born and raised on Long Island, N.Y. and has worn several hats in his professional life. After completing a B.S. in Physics at CCNY, New York City, he attended graduate schools at Duke University and Ohio State University where he taught Physics Lab courses.
Next he worked at a large computer company as a systems programmer, first in NYC for 2 years and then for another 3 in Detroit. When offered a job with Hewlett Packard in Cupertino, he leaped at the opportunity to move to Northern California in 1973. However, his interest in computer software had peaked and in less than a year he left and decided to pursue his life-long passion of becoming a fulltime, professional jazz pianist.
This he did nearly exclusively (with some teaching at Stanford University and the Jazzschool in Berkeley, CA thrown in) until his curiosity about how income taxes worked lead him to obtain a California tax preparer’s license via self-study in 1987. He quickly realized how little he knew about taxes and proceeded over the next year to take every single H&R Block tax class offered at that time.
Having been a full-time musician for several years, many of his musician friends became his initial clients. Wanting to further enhance his stature and learn more about taxation and the IRS , he passed the enrolled agent (EA) exam in 1991. This he followed up by becoming a National Tax Practice Institute Fellow, a prestigious credential awarded by the National Society of Enrolled Agents (NAEA). This gave him advanced training to deal both with IRS and FTB.
He is currently a member of several tax professionals’ organizations (CSEA, NAEA, NATP, NSTP) and (1) Enjoys the ongoing challenge of minimizing a client’s tax obligation in the face of constant tax law changes and/or (2) Representing the client as an Enrolled Agent to resolve their IRS or FTB tax-related problem.