The owner of a profitable medical practice with three S-Corporations, two rental properties, and a short-term rental unit in another state does not fit easily into any standard tax relationship. A neighborhood CPA handles the filings. A Big Four firm is not going to call. What is left, for most business owners in that position, is a compliance relationship that ends each April and does not pick up again until the following January.
AE Tax Advisors was built as a different answer. The firm, headquartered in Billings, Montana, focuses on proactive tax planning for business owners and real estate investors. Its advisory team includes licensed CPAs and IRS Enrolled Agents, and the firm operates through a virtual model, reporting clients in 47 states.
Christina Nortman is the firm’s Northeast managing partner. Before joining AE Tax Advisors, she worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers and CohnReznick, according to her profile on the firm’s team page. She holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in accounting from the University of Baltimore. Based in Maryland, she works primarily with high-income business owners and real estate investors who want multi-year tax strategy rather than a return filed once a year. The arc of that career, from two of the larger advisory firms in the country into a practice focused on owner-operated businesses, reflects a particular conviction about where the gap is: that the analytical discipline applied to institutional clients can be applied just as rigorously to the business owner running a company with $800,000 or $1.5 million in annual revenue.
What that discipline looks like, in practice, is an engagement that runs year-round rather than pointing only toward filing. Each new client relationship begins with what the firm calls a 3-Year Tax Lookback. The advisory team reviews the three most recent returns for missed deductions and structural inefficiencies. That work produces a written tax plan in which each strategy is tied to a specific provision of the Internal Revenue Code, along with a phased implementation schedule.
The firm charges $7,800 for an annual advisory engagement, according to its website. That covers quarterly check-ins, mid-year projections, and direct advisor access throughout the year. Where clients already have CPAs, attorneys, or financial planners, AE Tax Advisors coordinates with them rather than replacing them.
Mark Simonsen, a CPA and the firm’s Northwest managing partner, works from the Billings headquarters and, according to the team page, founded the Mountain West practice. He focuses on advanced tax strategy and entity structuring for business owners who have grown past what a standard filing relationship covers. Adam West, an IRS Enrolled Agent who is also a partner at Gonser, West and Associates, leads the Southeast practice out of Macon, Georgia.
Cost segregation is among the firm’s more technical specialties. The service involves an engineering analysis of a specific property that reclassifies building components out of a standard 27.5 or 39-year depreciation schedule and into shorter categories under MACRS. A single-family rental, a short-term rental property, or a commercial building all contain components such as appliances, carpeting, and certain electrical systems that depreciate faster than the building itself under the tax code. Identifying and separating those components is what the study accomplishes. Owners who did not commission a study at acquisition can still capture those classifications through a Form 3115 accounting method change, which avoids the need to amend prior returns. The firm reports completing more than 500 such studies, priced at $1 per square foot.
Entity structuring, S-Corporation elections, retirement plan design, and multi-state income planning round out the core advisory work. The firm handles defined benefit and cash balance plans, as well as planning around business exits and ownership transitions. IRS audit defense runs through the in-house team and through an advisory board that includes Jacob Simany, a tax attorney and founder of Simany Law who the firm says previously litigated for the IRS’s Office of Chief Counsel. Also on that board is Michael Zara, a business attorney whose profile notes a background in accounting and who advises on entity formation, contracts, and acquisitions.
Business and finance publications including Economic Insider, The Chicago Journal, and NY Weekly have covered the firm’s work in recent months.
The clients AE Tax Advisors is designed for are specific by intention. Business owners under $500,000 in annual revenue are not the focus. Neither are large companies with full internal finance teams. The firm sits at the point where decisions about entity structure, depreciation timing, and retirement contributions carry real consequences, and where no one is yet being paid to think about them twelve months in advance.