Harvey Bookstein

Harvey Bookstein is a co-founding Partner of RBZ and Co-Partner In-Charge of the firm’s Real Estate Group. Harvey has more than 40 years of public accounting experience and specializes in providing tax, accounting, and business consulting services to clients in the real estate and highnet- worth practice areas. Harvey’s clients include land entitlers, land developers, residential and commercial builders, property managers, investors, commercial and residential building owners, architectural firms, general contractors, and construction companies. Harvey also heads up the Real Estate Services Group with one of his partners, Yunna Barats. He has invested over $750,000,000 in real estate investments over the past 12 years with clients, friends, RBZ members and family funds. In addition, Harvey works with high-net-worth individuals and their families, family or other closely-held businesses, and specializes in estate planning, charitable giving, and dealing with financial issues relating to children, divorce and the development of strategies to pass family businesses and wealth from one generation to the next – a method he has developed and has registered as, “Therapeutic Accounting®.” Harvey’s approach is to not only look at a particular business, financial or personal issue, but to look at the specific issue as part of the “big picture.” Harvey oversees a wide range of services, including entity selection and structuring, negotiating and structuring acquisitions and dispositions, pre-acquisition due diligence, property repositioning strategies, succession planning, and tax-free exchanges. His goal is to anticipate his clients’ needs, ask the right questions, and then develop meaningful ideas and solutions that enable his clients to maintain a competitive edge. Beyond his commitment to his clients, Harvey established the Harvey and Harriet Bookstein Chair in Taxation within the California State University, Northridge, College of Business and Economics. This endowment also funds the Bookstein Institute for Higher Education in Taxation (Master in Taxation program). Harvey is currently the Chairman of JHI (an international affiliation of accounting firms) and is on the Board of Directors for The University Corporation of California State University.  In the past, Harvey has served on the Board of Directors for The Entrepreneurship Institute, Northridge, and Students for a Better Tomorrow. He is a former President and Board Member of the Los Angeles TelecommunicationsCommission, past Chairman of United Cerebral Palsy/Spastic Children’s Foundation of Greater Los Angeles/ Ventura, past Board Member of Hathaway Children’s Services, and Phoenix House. He also served as the Chairman of a local bank. Harvey is the author of Wake-Up Call: How I Changed my Life and Business – and You Can Too. His book reveals the secrets behind Therapeutic Accounting®, his innovative and holistic approach to business.  However, his story isn’t just about business.  His story also describes the unvarnished truth of how a workaholic changed his life, fixed what was broken, and discovered a few simple truths along the way. Wake-Up Call is available for purchase on Amazon.com and as an e-Book on Kindle and iBooks. Harvey is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the California Society of Certified Public Accountants. Harvey graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from California State University, Northridge. He is also a graduate of Leadership Los Angeles.