Carol A. Cantrell

Carol A. Cantrell, CPA, JD is a shareholder of Briggs & Veselka Co., one of the largest public accounting firms in Houston, Texas. She is also a Certified Financial Planner. She specializes in estate, tax and financial planning for families, closely held businesses, and investment entities. Prior to her merger with Briggs & Veselka in 2000, she and her husband, W. Patrick Cantrell, operated Cantrell & Company, a boutique tax firm in Houston, specializing in tax planning and IRS representation. Carol is a frequent speaker for national and state professional organizations on income taxation of estates and trusts, partnerships, and S corporations. She is also the author of CCH's Stock Options: Estate, Tax and Financial Planning, a treatise on employee stock options.

As a licensed attorney, Carol represented the Rudkin Testamentary Trust pro bono before the United States Supreme Court in Knight v. Commissioner (2008). In that decision, the Court resolved a circuit split over which administrative costs of an estate or trust are exempt from the 2-percent floor on miscellaneous itemized deductions under IRC Section 67. The court found that Section 67(e) exempts onlycosts that individuals do not ""commonly"" or ""customarily"" incur and because it saw no distinction between the investment costs incurred by the Trust and those commonly incurred by individuals, the Court found the Trust's investment advisory fees subject to the floor.

It is the author's sincere desire that this book will help its readers to distinguish between the costs incurred by a fiduciary to comply with the Uniform Principal and Income Act and the Uniform Prudent Investor Act and the costs voluntarily incurred by individual investors.