Living life to its fullest isn’t always cheap. Unfortunately, neither is dying, particularly if you have a hefty estate. The federal government imposes an estate tax on large estates and with the help from the IRS, they make it a priority to collect. How? IRS Form 706, United States Estate (and Generation-Skipping Transfer) Tax Return. [...]
I keep getting asked about the definition of "forensic". Remember ... "Bones" on TV is a "forensic" pathologist. There are "forensic" psychologists, "forensic" scientists and "forensic" accountants (like me!) Forensic comes from the Latin words "forensis" and "forum" which mean "public" and "forum". A "forensic" (any profession) is an individual, who declares, in a public [...]
Brave v. Brave, 2014 Ark. LEXIS 232 (April 17, 2014) What a difference a court makes! A divorce case involving a successful restaurant made news several months ago when the state Court of Appeals extended the scope of personal goodwill to businesses other than professional partnerships, requiring the trial court to exclude the value of [...]
Barnes v. Barnes, 2014 Tenn. App. LEXIS 200 (April 10, 2014) A recent nasty divorce case centering on the husband’s dental practice offers up a number of interesting valuation questions, including whether the final valuation was subject to a marketability discount (DLOM) and whether there was enterprise goodwill. The practice had two dentists—the husband and [...]
What do these amounts have in common: $0, $4.3 million, $9.3 million, $26 million, and $92.2 million? Amazingly, they are all valuation estimates of the same company at the same point in time. And the cause of these wild swings in value? The estimate of personal goodwill, as a recent estate case in Tax Court [...]
“Valuation report writing is a lot more challenging than we think,” says former IRS official Howard Lewis (International Society of Business Analysts and RiskGuidance Co. LLC). Speaking at the recent NYSSCPA Business Valuation Conference in New York City, he observed that valuation report writing and report review is an overlooked subject that deserves more attention. [...]
Rumor had it that Apple would ask for about $2 billion in lost profits and reasonable royalty from Samsung for infringing five of Apple's patents having to do with features such as "slide-to-unlock," universal search, and automatic word correction. Trial observers recently got to hear Apple's damages expert Christopher A. Vellturo (Quantitative Economic Solutions LLC) [...]
Many business valuation cases work their way through the courts each year, but only some of them have a significant impact on the profession. Here are some important excerpts from those cases. 1. Excess earnings method is alive and well. Although the excess earnings method has its critics, it is in use and it stands [...]
Judge Laro is a U.S. Tax Court Judge and is the author of the seminal Mandelbaum decision. Here is what he had to say at a recent luncheon moderated by 2 valuation experts. Tax Court facts. The moderators asked Judge Laro to situate the Tax Court in the U.S. legal system. The judge obliged and [...]
With the economy improving, and businesses growing again, cash flow can become an issue. To grow your business, cash flow is important; however increasing cash flow is easier said than done. To find out what it takes to get financing in this current economic climate, I spoke with a local banker. Here’s what he had [...]
