Miller Kaplan originated in Los Angeles, California as two separate firms in 1941 – later merging together to become one of the nation’s top 100 accounting firms. Explore some of the stories of who we are and how we came to be in the timeline below.
Sunderman was serving as a guest/summer lecturer at UCLA where he taught various accounting courses.
Soon thereafter, Sunderman’s firm merged with William T. Wheeling and became Sunderman, Wheeling, and Co.
(Arase had quite the backstory. Born in Los Angeles, 1921, to Japanese parents, he was sent to the Heart Mountain relocation center in Wyoming in 1942, and released later that same year. Arase enlisted in 1944 and served as Military Intelligence until the end of the war, after which, he graduated from college and eventually made his way back to Los Angeles.)
We retained a client around this time (in the 50s) that we still serve today.
Fresh out of The City College of New York, Baruch College, Mannon “Manny” Kaplan flew to Los Angeles to meet with fellow graduate of Baruch, Harry C. Fischer.
Fischer first offered Kaplan work as a 1-day temp (for $25). It wasn’t until after Kaplan had returned home to New York that Fischer called Kaplan and offered him the Junior Accountant position.
Sunderman’s firm, specializing in commercial business accounts, merged with Fischer’s firm which specialized in tax exempts such as Labor Unions. Sunderman was named as Managing Partner and the newly combined firm was named:
At the time of the merger, there were 7 partners – four from Sunderman’s firm and three from Fischer’s.
Fischer published “The Uses of Accounting in Collective Bargaining.”
With the founding partners retiring, Miller was elected Managing Partner and the firm was renamed:
At the time, the Media practice analyzed stats by hand, but later upgraded the process with the development of a web platform.
Bob Sheets left the practice and the firm was renamed to:
Manny Kaplan helped write the AICPA guide to employee benefit plans; Miller Kaplan was one of the first certified public accounting firms to have experience with employee benefit plan audits.
The firm’s LA office moved to a new a space on Lankershim Blvd – where it was located for nearly 30 years.
The firm was named as a Top 100 U.S. Accounting Firm by Accounting Today – and has remained on that list ever since.
Michael Kaplan was named as a top business manager in Variety’s “Business Managers Elite” list.
This added and expanded services such as complex individual taxation, partnership taxation, real estate taxation, and estates and trusts, and substantially grew the firm’s San Francisco tax practice. This partnership also established the firm’s broad support for the legal services industry with law firms, receivers, courts, and distribution firms, among others.
Additionally, the firm gained an office in Idaho and added Julia and Jude Damasco to the partnership.
We celebrated our 75th year.
With this branding refresh, we not only modernize our image, but also acknowledge our rich history of experience, reiterate our commitment to our clients, and highlight our mission of moving the firm – and more importantly, our clients – forward. At Miller Kaplan, we believe:
vulnerability assessments, staff awareness training, security management of the IT network, incident response and business continuity planning, and Virtual-CISO (vCISO), among others.
Through this, we also added David Lam, CISSP, CPP to the partnership.
We know that the best way to serve our clients is with a smart, productive, and happy team of professionals.
