Attorneys, accountants, wealth managers, and other trusted advisors refer their clients to us in order to facilitate the following transactions:
Tax Court Disputes – Our forensic accounting and litigation support professionals assist taxpayers and taxing agencies with a wide variety of federal, state, and local tax disputes.
For more information, please contact one of the professionals listed below.
Our Tax Valuation team collaborates with our internal multi-disciplinary professionals to provide the value analyses and fresh independent opinions to fiduciaries, financing sources and investors for public and private company transactions.
Most companies are diligent about adding acquired assets to their books. A large percentage of companies do not focus on eliminating assets from their books when sold or retired. The asset may have reached a $0 depreciable value, but each asset costs money when it comes to the replacement value for insurance purposes. Why does a 200-bed hospital have 500 beds on its asset list? Why does a 600-seat multiscreen movie theatre have 1,000 seats on its books and a projector from 1993?
A 409a analysis (IRS section 409a) refers to valuing the class of equity provided to parties without remuneration (as an incentive) for federal tax reporting purposes. The analysis is also required for financial reporting purposes (FASB ASC 718). The analysis typically requires a valuation of the underlying business or assets. Sometimes we can backsolve a value for the equity based upon a recent subject company transaction.
Real estate should be looked at strategically for potential beneficial tax reporting, financial reporting, depreciation including cost segregation and bonus depreciation, financing including sale leaseback, etc.
The fair market value of acquired real estate is often much higher than the seller’s capitalized basis and the allocation between land (not depreciable) and improvements (depreciable) is often different than what the assessor has determined.
For financial reporting, the value of acquired real estate needs to be allocated to land, building and improvements, and intangible assets.
Financial reporting compliance requires a determination of fair lease rate.
A large percentage of transactions include lease agreements that are not at current fair market value. This is more often the case when the owner of the business is also the owner of the real estate.
In the acquisition of a medical practice, for instance, the acquiror must not pay a higher than market rate to acquire or lease the property from the seller.
There is often a material depreciation benefit to stepping up the value of acquired assets vs taking them over at book value. We provide preliminary estimates to determine if the fair value step up of the acquired assets is worthwhile to the acquiror.
We also find that sellers’ asset lists typically include a material percentage of assets no longer in use (“ghost assets”). Cleaning up the asset list can benefit a buyer in numerous ways:
Reducing goodwill
Not paying for insurance and property tax on assets that don’t exist.
Complying with audit requirements to have control of their assets.
Marshall & Stevens provides Fairness and Solvency Opinions, valuation analyses, investigative accounting, and expert witness services to assist public and private clients with their important transactions and litigation matters.
Here are a few client success stories from public and private companies we’ve worked with
