A couple of years ago for various reasons, my co-founder and I decided to put the company in my name. We are friends for over 2 decades, our kids grew up together, she's like my sister. This isn't our first business, we ran another company together with 3 other partners for a few years and when we cashed out we started a new company. We've been through truly thick, thin, divorces, moving out of state, death of parents, kids weddings.. everything.We put the company completely in my name for personal reasons, that are no longer the case, however the business has grown in value and we've been advised that to put the shares in her name she now has to pay a hefty amount to the company to purchase share that are, essentially to me, her property already. Or, face a possible IRS concern. I understand there might be some back taxes to pay but what we can't figure out if why I can't just give her the shares that she worked for? We could prove with documents that we shared the burden of work all this time and we paid ourselves equally as employees. No dividends were ever issued.Curious if anyone else has been through this, some hope would be great as it is the last thing I want, that she has to fork out for her shares.