Getting To Know You Tuesday: Tom Bazley

Thomas E. Bazley, CPA, is a tax professional with more than 25 years of experience. Tom serves in the National Tax Office at Weaver, where he works on complex federal tax matters involving closely held businesses, retirement benefits, and individual and fiduciary tax planning. His work often puts him at the intersection of income and transfer taxes—particularly when the law is unsettled, and there isn’t an obvious answer.

Before joining Weaver, Tom was BDO’s Estate, Gift and Trust Practice Leader for its Florida offices. He’s also a frequent speaker and CPE instructor and has written for The Tax Adviser.

But tax professionals are more than tax.

So, let’s get to know Tom.

In His Own Words

1. Where are you right now? Sitting in my home office in Lakeland, Florida.

2. What’s your official title, and what do you actually do? I am the Private Client Services Technical Practice Leader. I serve as an internal technical resource on income and transfer tax matters related to high-net-worth and high-earning families.

3. Where did you go to school, and what did you study?  University of North Florida in Jacksonville, and I majored in accounting.

4. How did you end up in tax? While I was attending college, I worked for a small, local firm. I worked on a lot of audits. Audit work bored me. At the same time, I found my tax classes fascinating.

5. What was your first real job? Ever? At 16, I was a stock boy at Pic N’ Save making $3.35/hr. My first job in this profession was the aforementioned staff accountant, doing audit and write-up work for a local practitioner.

6. What’s one thing people might be surprised to learn about you? My Apple Music playlist runs the gamut, from Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” to AC/DC’s “Shook Me All Night Long” to MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This.”

7. If you weren’t working in tax, what would you be doing? If I knew at age 23 what I know now, I’d have gone to law school. I think litigating complex tax matters would be exciting.

8. What’s the best piece of tax, money, or career advice you’ve ever received? Focus on mastering one or two areas and being THE go-to person in those spaces. Don’t be a jack of all trades, master of none.

9. What tax issue do you think is getting too much attention right now? Trump Accounts.

10. What tax issue isn’t getting enough attention? Footnote 102 from the Joint Committee on Taxation’s Blue Book and the impact of the repeal of § 68(e). (Note from Kelly: More or less, Footnote 102 says that, because Congress removed a special exception for trusts and estates, the new limit on certain deductions now applies to them, too.)

11. What’s the biggest tax myth you’d like to bust? “I didn’t think I’d owe tax when I inherited money from my parents.” You don’t owe tax on what you inherited. You owe tax on the income generated by what you inherited. (Note from Kelly: In addition to the distinction between income and inheritance tax that Tom makes, it’s worth noting that in 2026, only five states—Kentucky, Maryland, Nebraska, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania—have an inheritance tax. Iowa repealed its inheritance tax for deaths occurring on or after January 1, 2025.)

12. What’s a tax question you wish people would ask you more often? To be honest, what I wish people would ask is anything that follows, “Before I do this…”

13. What’s one tax rule you would change if you could? Carried interests would be taxed at ordinary income rates. (Note from Kelly: Currently, carried interest generally allows investment fund managers to pay lower long-term capital gains tax rates on qualifying profits.)

14. What’s one non-tech thing in your office that you couldn’t do without? For Father’s Day, my wife gave me a huge collage of photos of our daughters taken while they were attending the University of Florida. Various things like them at games, their dorm rooms, events, etc. It hangs on my wall to my right. It combines three of my favorite things in life… the Florida Gators and my two daughters.

15. Which tech tool, platform, or software do you rely on most in your practice? Checkpoint and BNA Tax Research are open all day, every day.

16. What’s the best use of AI in tax or tax practice? I can get a simple question from a colleague, feed it to an AI tool, get the answer, and have the tool draft the response. What used to take 15-20 minutes now takes 3-5. I get to focus on more complex issues that warrant more of my attention.

17. What are you watching right now (streaming or otherwise)? It’s college football season. There’s your answer. Outside of that, Reacher.

18. Coffee or tea? Iced tea.

19. Pancakes or waffles? Waffles.

20. If you received an unexpected tax refund tomorrow, what would you do with it? My youngest is still in grad school. Any unexpected money is spoken for by that current life fact.

You can find out more about Tom on Weaver’s website and on LinkedIn.

About Getting to Know You

If you’d like to recommend a tax pro to be featured, send your suggestions to gtky (at) taxgirl (dot) com with the subject: Getting to Know You Tuesday. Self-nominations are totally okay and encouraged! If you’ve submitted a nomination before, feel free to send it again. I’ll consider all submissions, even those that were selected, so long as they were more than three years ago.