2016 has been a busy year for Barnwell. We have continued to deliver extraordinary client results through our proprietary research and delivery methodology. In addition, Barnwell is pleased to announce several new Partners. As a group, the new Partners bring decades of experience across virtually all areas of taxation. Finally, Barnwell has acquired Compton & Associates, a regional state and local tax consulting and compliance firm. Please join us in welcoming the new Partners, and the entire Compton family to Barnwell.
Whitney Compton joined Barnwell Consulting as a partner in 2016 when Barnwell Consulting acquired Compton & Associates. Whitney founded Compton & Associates, in 1991. Since that time, Compton & Associates grew into a national state and local tax practice. Before founding Compton, he served as Southeast Region Director of State and Local Taxes for Ernst & Young and Atlantic Region Director of State and Local Taxes for Arthur D. Little Valuation. Prior to that, Mr. Compton was Senior General Tax Attorney for USX Corporation, working in the Pittsburgh, Dallas, Birmingham, and San Francisco offices. Mr. Compton has over 30 years of experience in sales and use taxation. He formerly chaired the American Bar Association’s Sales Tax Subcommittee and the Task Force on Sales Tax on Services.
Michael Lippman is a seasoned tax professional with more than 35 years of leadership and tax experience, most with two of the largest international accounting firms. He held an array of national and international leadership positions, including national partner in charge of the state and local tax practice, partner in charge of the Washington National Tax Practice, and partner in charge of operations support, where he had responsibilities for marketing, technology, information management, recruiting, and global strategy. Splitting his time between New York and Washington, D.C., he served many of firms’ largest domestic and international clients.
Terry Fredrick has over thirty-two years of public accounting and private industry tax experience spending most of his time focusing on state and local tax matters. Prior to joining Barnwell Consulting, Mr. Frederick was Director – State & Local Corporate Tax for Sprint in Overland Park, Kansas where he was responsible for the company’s state and local income and franchise tax function for over twenty-six years. He also was extensively involved in acquiring substantial economic incentives for the company. He is a past Chairman and served as a Board Director for the Council on State Taxation from 1996 until joining Barnwell Consulting. He is also past President of the Kansas City Chapter of the Tax Executives Institute and served on the National State and Local Tax Committee for TEI until recently.
James O’Brien has over 31 years of tax experience, including ten years in a Big Eight public accounting firm, four years in a large law firm, and seventeen years of large public company in-house experience at senior leadership levels. He has dealt with a broad array of federal, state, local, and foreign local country tax issues and related tax audits. He has strong mid-career experience handling a wide range of state & local tax matters. With his extensive tax experience in a variety of professional settings, Mr. O’Brien has advised and assisted with tax planning and tax risk minimization and related financial reporting issues, tax due diligence, and tax dispute resolution, including tax audits and appeals, as well as tax operational issues.
Susan Pick is the Managing Partner of the Firm’s Interest Recovery Services practice. In this capacity, she oversees and directs the review and analysis of the interest and penalties assessed by the IRS. Ms. Pick has over 25 years of federal tax controversy experience, including 15 years in a Big Four accounting firm and 6 years with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). She has significant experience in navigating the IRS and assisting clients with a variety of controversy and general IRS issues. Over the past 20 years, Ms. Pick has assisted individual and corporate clients in reviewing the clients’ IRS accounts to identify errors in the IRS interest and penalty assessments.
Mark Klopfenstein brings over 30 years of experience in business, tax consulting, public accounting, investment banking, merchant banking, and entrepreneurship to Barnwell Consulting. Since 1995, Mark has managed an Atlanta-based financial group he founded that has participated as finder or advisor in over 60 corporate transactions with an aggregate value approaching $3 billion. His entities have also served as principal equity investor in leveraged acquisitions with an aggregate value of over $200 million. Many of the group’s opportunities have involved solutions for various tax and financial inefficiencies in the operation or sale of a business.
