Lou Ann Gibson, CPA/ABV, CVA, MAFF

Lou Ann Gibson leads HoganTaylor’s Estate, Gift and Trust Planning and Compliance Services practice. She is an accomplished CPA whose career includes more than 30 years of public accounting experience providing specialized tax, financial, and advisory services to privately held businesses, business owners, wealthy families, and not-for-profit organizations.

Her experience includes working with clients, their families, and advisors, assisting them with a variety of needs:

• Creating and implementing strategies for wealth transfer planning
• Identifying innovative planning tools and providing the appropriate financial guidance needed to achieve long-term goals
• Developing a clear understanding of the objectives and the unique challenges that stand in the way of achieving them

She works closely with her clients to plan and develop personalized solutions to execute on their behalf.

Additionally, Lou Ann has more than 20 years of experience providing valuation services that have helped her clients ascertain, and substantiate, the value of their enterprises. She was among the first in the nation to receive a Certified Valuation Analyst (CVA) designation by the National Association of Certified Valuation Analysts, and since then has earned the Accredited Business Valuation (ABV) and Master Analyst in Financial Forensics (MAFF) designations, putting her in an elite group of professionals nationwide.

She is skilled at supporting her work through providing deposition, testimony and responding to rigorous cross-examination in many litigation settings, as well as successfully negotiating and defending valuation determinations with the IRS.

She is recognized by the courts and attorneys in her field and has been named Special Master, as well as a court appointed neutral in numbers of litigated situations.

Representative Experience

• Counseled a not-for-profit entity in restructuring to a form of governance that provided less IRS exposure and minimized the risk of revocation of their nonprofit status. The new structure allows them to more effectively use their assets valued at more than $12.0 million to meet their charitable objectives.
• Consult with and review the tax return for the largest community foundation in the nation.
• Assisted clients in transferring hundreds of millions to the next generation by developing and implementing estate plans. Utilizing such facilities as charitable lead and remainder trusts, sales of private annuities, sales to defective grantor trusts, gifts to family investment companies. Providing comprehensive transfer strategies for wealthy clients in many situations and circumstances.
• Represented business and individual clients before the Internal Revenue Service and various state tax authorities.
• Provide expert witness services to attorneys in various litigated matters involving financial disputes.
• Assisted attorneys and their clients in dozens of divorce cases to validate support and division of assets utilizing best-practice methodologies; such as identification of marital assets, preparation of multi year of income and expense projections utilizing investable assets and budgets developed for the client.
• Provided valuation services to a consolidated corporation valued at more than $100 million involving numerous businesses in various industry segments and assets including hotels, real estate and mines.
• Served as Special Master in a class action lawsuit involving a settlement award for more than $2.0 million.