About Us

Charles D. Shapero, CPA, MST

Charles

Widget's founder and current President, Charles is a graduate of Golden Gate University where he earned his Master’s Degree in Taxation. He is also a graduate of California State University Fullerton where he earned his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Accounting.

Charles was born and raised in Southern California and moved to Florida in 2004 to obtain a better work/life balance for himself and his family. His career started when he was in college at a small bookkeeping office, Bill Holt and Associates, where he was able to practice the skills he learned in the classroom at work on a daily basis. To earn your CPA designation in California, unlike Florida, you need a certain number of hours performing financial statement audits, which Bill Holt and Associates, could not provide. Thus, to obtain his certification, Charles went to work for Moss Adams, LLP, which is the 11th largest firm in the nation. Charles progressed there from Staff to Senior to Manager and was on the verge of earning the Senior Manager title when he made the decision that working for one of the largest firms in America was not conducive to him having a personal life.  He decided to leave the firm, and lower his cost of living to spend more time with his family by relocating his family to Florida in 2004.

Once in Florida, Charles worked for a couple years for Foelger, Ronz and Straw, P.A. He loved the work, but the over an hour drive each way via US 19 was tedious and time consuming, so after he completed his two years commitment, Charles joined the established and ethical firm, Harper Van Scoik (HVS) in Clearwater, Florida. After three years at HVS, a large regional firm, Carr, Riggs & Ingram, LLC (CRI) acquired HVS and Charles found himself back in the position he was in at Moss Adams; working for another large regional firm (CRI is the 34th largest firm in the nation).

Even though Charles saw that many changes were afoot with his employer, and also having gone through several painful mergers at Moss Adams, LLP during his tenure there, Charles stuck it out with CRI for two years before deciding it was time to found his own firm and give his clients the level of service that he wasn’t able to provide them in years. Service where it’s more about giving the client what they need, as opposed to making “every billable hour” count.

Charles earned his Certified Public Accounting (CPA) designation from the state of California in 1998 and maintained that certification until 2007. As Charles had no plans to return to the state of California, he let his California CPA designation go inactive.Charles has been certified as a Certified Public Accountant in the state of Florida since 2004 and maintains this designation through a minimum of 80 hours of tax and accounting continuing education every two years.

In 2022, Charles, after over 18 years in Florida, decided to relocate Widget headquarters to Knoxville Tennessee!

Why? Because this California boy, turned Florida boy, has had amusement parks, beaches and cruises for most of his life, and he wanted to experience snowfall in his front yard at least once. Having mountains at his disposal is fantastic and watching the true change of seasons for the first time in his life is a new adventure.

As a CPA, Charles can serve anyone in any of the 50 states, and, for the past 33 years, he has served clients across the USA as well as several clients in the UK, Australia and Canada.

What Covid-19 taught the world is that business has changed and with Google Meets allowing for face-to-face meetings without being in-person, we can serve our clients from anywhere and we can LIVE the dream!!

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