Robert T. Tighe, CPA, MST, CVA

Robert T. Tighe, CPA, MST, CVA

Managing Principal
Robert.Tighe@tko.cpa
Phone: 224.359.0330
Fax: 224.359.0331

Bob is a founding shareholder and is the Managing Principal of the firm. Bob oversees all service areas of the firm but has a primary focus in taxation, mergers & acquisitions and the construction, manufacturing and distribution division of the firm. His area of concentration is in accounting, general business planning and tax consulting for middle-market and closely held businesses.

Prior to establishing Tighe, Kress & Orr, Bob was with Arthur Andersen LLP and RSM McGladrey in Chicago. Bob believes in maintaining close contact with each of his clients and their business. For many years, he has worked with prominent construction, manufacturing and distribution clients in the Chicago area, which has enabled him to consult on very complex issues.

Bob’s accomplishments include helping his clients’ structure new tax entities to reduce liability and reduce taxes. He has handled complex compliance and consulting areas of work to include:  C corporation, S corporation, partnerships, trust, non-profit and individual type returns. He has in-depth experience with QuickBooks and Peachtree and has on many occasions acted as an internal CFO/Controller for the business he supports. Often, he has been able to “setup” a client so that they were able to do the majority of their accounting within their organization.  He has also been involved in organization and liquidation of domestic companies, succession planning and merger & acquisition to include consulting on tax-free reorganizations, often saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax or in helping to negotiate a better purchase price.  Bob’s experience also includes conducting and overseeing numerous IRS and states audits, most of which resulted in “No Change” letters from the IRS.

Bob is a Certified Valuation Analyst with the National Association of Certified Valuators and Analysts. He was involved in many valuations over his career and believes that business valuations and understanding valuations help owners understand their business in a much greater depth and, in many situations, provide opportunities to make the business more profitable and help owners with succession plans.

Bob is very involved in the community and uses his expertise in non-for-profit accounting and auditing to provide volunteer services to a local youth organization where he serves as the Treasurer.  In that role and previous roles, he has been very involved in all financial decisions of multi-million-dollar organizations and consults regularly on budgetary and long-term planning issues.  He has many years of governmental and non-for-profit audit experience and when he ran the firms audit department, he was involved with over 45 audits annually.  Bob has taught the MBA Financial Accounting course at Concordia University Chicago, the MSA Taxation course at Dominican University and is a former member of the Illinois CPA Societies Governmental Report Review Board.

Knowing his clients as individuals and their goals as business owners has enabled Bob the ability to help clients minimize their taxes and optimize profits.  Bob prides himself with “listening” to the clients needs so that he can really provide the best possible solutions to their business needs.  Bob attributes his success to open dialogue, frequent communication, and understanding the benefits of teamwork and goal setting.

Away from the office, Bob enjoys scouting, coaching, golfing & fishing, vacationing and spending time with his family.  Bob was an officer in the Army reserves for close to 10 years and has served in Iraq, where he received the Bronze Star medal and a Combat Action Badge.  He resides in Elgin with his wife, Chrissy, and their children, John and Margaret.