About ✦ Ashley Burdette
Ashley Burdette, CPA
The certified public accountant who makes the firm’s combined approach work: tax return preparation and compliance, delinquent filings, trust and estate returns, and the international reporting that trips up taxpayers with foreign accounts or income.
Ashley Burdette
Certified Public Accountant · MSL in Taxation, Georgetown Law · North Star Law Firm
Ashley Burdette handles tax return preparation and compliance for North Star Law Firm’s California clients. Nearly every matter on this site runs on accurate returns: a Franchise Tax Board protest needs the underlying return to be right, an offer in compromise cannot be filed until every year is current, a trust administration produces fiduciary returns for as long as it lasts, and a bankruptcy petition is built on the last several years of filings. Ashley is the one who gets those numbers right, so the legal work can proceed.
Her work is also what lets clients explain a problem once. Phillip Zagotti handles the controversy, the planning, and the court work; Ashley handles the compliance; and each matter gets both without the client coordinating between two offices.
Experience
Ashley’s career runs through three of the country’s largest accounting firms and more than a decade of boutique partnership. She began at EY in advisory, then co-founded Zagotti & Burdette CPA, LLC, where she spent over ten years as a partner advising individuals and businesses on tax compliance, planning, and preparation, serving clients from Houston to Doha, Qatar. She went on to national-firm roles in international tax, first as an international private client services manager at RSM US and then as an international tax manager at KPMG.
Her preparation practice covers individual, business, trust, and estate returns, federal and California, with particular depth in the delinquent-filer situations the firm sees most: taxpayers who are years behind and need to get current before the IRS or the FTB will consider a payment plan or an offer. For California clients that includes the state-specific pieces, such as Form 3840 reporting for 1031 exchanges, Form 541 fiduciary returns, and the nonresident and part-year returns that follow people in and out of the state.
International tax
Ashley’s focus within tax is international, practiced at the national-firm level in KPMG’s and RSM’s international tax groups. She holds a Master of Studies in Law in Taxation from Georgetown University Law Center along with Georgetown’s International Taxation Certificate. For clients, that means experience with the reporting obligations that carry the largest penalties for the smallest oversights: FBAR filings, Form 8938 foreign asset disclosures, foreign trust and corporation reporting, and the streamlined compliance procedures for taxpayers who need to come back into the system. California’s large population of foreign-born business owners and cross-border families makes that experience a routine part of the practice here.
Author
Co-author of the firm’s books
Ashley co-authored two books with Phillip Zagotti, both written in plain English for the people who have to live with these issues rather than for other tax professionals.
Taxed: A Taxpayer’s Guide to Tax Defense and Resolution
What the IRS notices mean, what the agencies can and cannot do, and how each resolution tool actually works, written for the taxpayer rather than the professional. Co-authored with Ashley Burdette.
Trusted: The Essential Guide for Trustees
A plain-English manual for the family member who just became a trustee: duties, notices, accounting, distributions, and the tax returns nobody warned them about. Co-authored with Ashley Burdette.
Credentials & Education
Credentials
- Certified Public Accountant, Texas State Board of Public Accountancy
- Master of Studies in Law (MSL) in Taxation, Georgetown University Law Center
- International Taxation Certificate, Georgetown University Law Center
- BBA in Accounting, University of Houston, C.T. Bauer College of Business
Get the returns right, and the rest of the case gets easier.
A free consultation about delinquent filings, trust and estate returns, or international reporting, anywhere in California.