Director Gregory Labagh has helped Shea Labagh Dobberstein’s clients in the areas of tax planning, estate planning, strategic and business planning, and financial oversight for twenty years. Prior to joining SLD he was involved with VISTA and the Peace Corps, and he worked for eight years in private industry.

Mr. Labagh has extensive experience in the area of personal and business tax planning, helping owners of closely-held businesses minimize the total impact of business, personal, and estate taxes. 

Some representative recent engagements that Mr. Labagh has handled include:

• Generating creative tax planning ideas for a business owner. A client who owned an S corporation, a C corporation, and valuable related assets was seeking ways to reduce his large tax bills. Mr. Labagh devised a plan that repositioned the assets, adjusting the relationship between what was owned by the businesses and what was owned by the owner personally. The result was a significant increase in the owner’s total after-tax income.

• Developing a personal and estate tax plan for a business client. A business owner was so involved with his company that he had made no plans for preserving his wealth. Mr. Labagh offered his help. He introduced the client to an attorney and financial planner, and helped create a plan to protect the client’s assets and to assure adequate retirement income. The client and his family now use wealth preserving strategies including the unified tax credit, insurance policies, and trusts to preserve assets and provide for future cash needs.

• Devising a plan to protect business assets. A contractor was concerned that the nature of his business exposed it to risk of lawsuit. The business owned outright a $1 million building, which could be lost in a successful lawsuit Distributing the building to the owner was not a good option, since the distribution would create a taxable event and a large tax liability. Mr. Labagh developed a plan that separated the business into two corporations, protecting the hard-earned asset and avoiding a large tax bill.

Gregory Labagh is a CPA and a member of the AICPA, the California Society of CPAs, the California Society of CPAs’ Committee on Management of an Accounting Practice, the Steering Committee of Financial Review, the Board of the Olympic Club 2000-2003, and the Board of Directors of the Hanna Boys Center. He holds a BA in Business Administration, concentration in Accounting, from San Francisco State University. Mr. Labagh and his wife Jo have 4 children, Alexandra, Julian, Kathryn and Joseph, and he is also active in church activities.