Income Tax

 

Our income tax service goes far beyond simply preparing tax returns. We provide a full range of tax planning and tax management services.

Our goal is to guide you in the nuances of tax minimization and tax management in your long- and short-term time horizons. We base our planning approach on both our familiarity with your account and our firm's many years of service to a broad base of clients.

 

Our client base encompasses virtually all industries and types of business activities.

We have earned a reputation with the Internal Revenue Service for preparing accurate returns. We generally take aggressive, but reasonable, stances on all tax issues.

We take additional steps to ensure that income amounts reported on the return agree or reconcile to third party information reported to the Internal Revenue Service.

​

​

Estate and Gift Tax Services

 

In conjunction with our income tax services, we offer our clients complete estate and gift tax planning and management services.

We provide planning and compliance services related to peripheral entities, such as:

We have substantial experience with estates of all sizes. We serve those small enough to have no Federal filing requirements and those large enough to be responsible for tens of millions of dollars in tax.

Our firm maintains a unique approach to valuation issues related to estate and gift taxes. We generally have a substantial inventory of returns and planning engagements in process. This keeps us in touch with developing and traditional issues and techniques related to asset valuation.

Due to our broad base of accounting, auditing, and income tax clients, and our strategic professional alliances, we have been exposed to and helped develop specific valuation plans for a variety of industry and asset groups.

We believe that the client should be informed of all valuation options and that the most realistic, aggressive valuation techniques should be used.

The firm also provides valuation services to various other professional firms in the area.

 

 

Auditing and Outside Accounting Services

 

Our accounting and auditing services are traditional as well as progressive and informative.

Our goal is to provide a valuable personal service and provide a clear picture of where your business or entity is and where it is heading. We attempt to provide a more personal level of service by returning the majority of our staff to each auditing and outside accounting engagement year after year.

By adding to this our concept of training across disciplines, we are able to field a multi-disciplined, experienced staff for each engagement.

Besides traditional accounting and auditing services, Freemon, Shapard and Story also provides operational auditing services and fraud examination services.

​

Peer Review Report

 

 

Management Advisory

 

Freemon, Shapard and Story provides services to start-up companies as well as growing and maturing entities.

Our staff is very proactive and quick to anticipate needs or respond to requests. We customize our services to each client and do not attempt to fit your needs with someone else's answers.

Our management advisory services include areas such as obtaining financing, budgeting, cash flow planning, compensation and benefit planning, strategic analysis and planning, mergers and acquisitions, transfers of businesses to family members, and sales and purchases of businesses.

We have experience in these areas for almost all industries and forms of organizations in this region. Due to our extensive estate planning and compliance department, we are also able to provide unique planning advice for generational transfers of small to large family businesses.

 

 

Bookkeeping and Accounting Services

 

We have a large, very experienced staff in our bookkeeping and accounting department. They provide services to small, medium, and large businesses and to individuals with various needs.

We can be your company's outsource for your entire accounting function or for your limited bookkeeping functions, such as reconciling your bank and checkbook balances. Some individuals and businesses use this department as a virtual office. Others use it as an internal audit function and some as a personal secretarial function.

Our bookkeeping and accounting department utilizes commercial software packages and customized software developed by our computer personnel to accommodate clients' special needs or wants.

Time and time again, we have demonstrated our ability to meet client recording and reporting needs. We produce reports that have meaning to our clients and that are customized to the extent necessary for each client to easily understand.

This department produces an outsourced service at a value that clients find is not only well below the cost of maintaining their own staff, but is provided at a higher quality professional level.

 

 

Litigation Support and Forensic Accounting

 

We provide litigation support and forensic accounting services to a variety of law firms and other clients.

Because of the nature of this work, we are selective in the engagements we accept.

Freemon, Shapard and Story provides services to plaintiffs or defendants. Support services have included asset valuation issues, fraud and embezzlement detection, divorce settlements, reconstruction of records, trust terminations, family dispute settlements, arbitration, loss of income projections on oil and gas wells, and other business ventures.

We have been selected by the courts as auditors in complex multi-state business and guardianship issues and our members have been appointed as temporary administrators in intestate situations.

 

 

Fiduciary Support

 

Our extensive client base has allowed us to develop services related to management support of estates and trusts. We assist trust managers in planning and compliance with complex issues related to intervivos and testamentary trusts including their original funding, operation, and ultimate termination.

Along with our accounting and auditing professional education, our specialists also pursue advanced professional education in estate and trust management to stay abreast of the ever-changing fiduciary environment. We particularly pursue advanced education in the various applications of the Texas Trust provisions.

Our client base ranges from individual trustees to branch and central trust departments of large national banks.

From time to time, members of our firm have been and are asked to serve in a trustee capacity.

We provide these services only when we believe it will be in the best interest of our clients. Providing this service enables the firm to further enhance its knowledge in the estate and trust management area and the investment, management, and distribution of trust assets.

 

 

Charitable Organization Support

 

We have a broad client base of private foundations, public foundations, health and welfare organizations, public hospitals, and churches.

Freemon, Shapard and Story helps managers and directors plan and comply with the enormously complex issues related to these charitable entities.

Our expertise comes from decades of practical service and formal educational training. We regularly advise entities in compliance issues, fund raising, grant writing, and event planning and management.

As our members regularly serve as officers and board members of these organizations, we have a deep, personal knowledge of their operation and management challenges.

 

 

Valuations

 

What is my business worth?  What is the value of my estate?  These are common question many business owners and taxpayers are faced with as life events such as death, divorce, and retirement occur.  Our firm offers a wide-variety of valuation services to answer these questions and advise you through such life events.

 

We have credentialed Certified Valuation Analysts (CVA) on staff that are uniquely equipped to place a realistic monetary value on your most valuable assets.  We tailor each valuation engagement to the attributes of the particular business interest or asset we value while factoring all internal and external factors.  Our experienced staff and commitment to quality will produce valuation reports that are impartial and reliable.

 

We also are available to provide expert witness testimony and consulting services for your valuation litigation needs.  We adhere to the professional standards of the National Association of Certified Valuation Analysts (NACVA) and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA).

 

Please follow the following links to learn more about our valuation team:

 

      Ryan Cannedy, CPA, CVA             Lauren Welch, CPA, CVA