Business & Practice Valuation

Income for a salaried spouse is on a pay stub. Income for a self-employed spouse is a judgment, and when the spouse's reported income looks low, the question becomes whether a different figure should be used for support. The legal frame, briefly Child support statutes in many states, including Utah's, allow a court to impute income to a parent who is voluntarily unemployed or underemployed. Alimony laws commonly consider earning capacity. The standards, the findings required,

Physicians and dentists often assume their practice is worth a fixed percentage of annual collections. That rule of thumb is common, easy to repeat, and a poor substitute for analysis. The insight: a practice is valued on what a buyer could keep, and in a professional practice that is less than it looks A practice generates income because a licensed professional works in it. The value question is how much of that income would continue under a different owner, and at what cost

I spent 25 years running an equipment dealership before I started valuing businesses. The credentials tell you I know the methods. The years in the business tell me what to question in the numbers. The insight: every industry has a handful of numbers that tell the real story A financial statement shows revenue, costs, and profit. It does not tell you which line is a real cost, which is a financing cost, and which is a subsidy that could disappear. An analyst who has never run

If a business has a buy-sell agreement, someone will point to its price formula and say the question of value has been answered. Sometimes it has. More often the formula is one piece of evidence, and its weight depends on how it was set and whether anyone ever followed it. Two separate questions Does the agreement set the value for the divorce? The spouse is not a party to the agreement, and courts differ on how much a price set between the owners binds the marital estate. Co

Most attorneys read a valuation report from the first page to the conclusion. A better order starts with the pages that show what the expert took for granted. The insight: the calculator test A strong report lets a reader reproduce the conclusion. Every number in the conclusion traces to an exhibit, and every exhibit traces to a source. If you cannot follow a figure from the conclusion page back to a document, the opinion rests on something the report is not showing you. A re

In a business valuation case, the client's deposition and the expert's report are read against each other. The first place cross-examination looks for a weakness is a place where the client's testimony and the documents or the report disagree. The insight: the client is usually the expert's source of facts A valuation expert relies on information from management: how the business operates, what the owner does, which expenses are personal, what to expect next year. If the clie

Two experts can start with the same financial statements and the same discount rate and still reach different conclusions, because they were asked to value different things. The standard of value defines the assignment. It is a legal question, and the financial consequences are large. The standards you will see Fair market value. The price at which property would change hands between a hypothetical willing buyer and a hypothetical willing seller, neither under compulsion, bot

A return that is accurate for tax purposes can still understate what an owner has available to spend. Most of what looks like hidden income is legal. It is income the return does not show, and the tax return is where the trail begins. The insight: compare the return to itself before comparing it to anything else The business return, the personal return, and the owner's spending should tell one story. Gaps between them point to the questions worth asking. Start with the three-

That claim is sometimes true. Businesses do decline, and owners do carry heavy debt. A forensic accountant does not assume it is false. The work is to test it against evidence that does not depend on the owner's word. The insight: taxable income is a tax number A business can show a small taxable profit while generating substantial cash. Accelerated depreciation, owner perks, prepaid expenses, and discretionary spending all reduce taxable income without reducing the cash avai

When a business owned before the marriage grows during it, the central question is why it grew. Whether the answer matters legally depends on the jurisdiction. The financial answer is something an analyst can build from records. The legal frame, briefly In many states, growth in a separate-property asset that comes from market forces or other passive factors stays separate, while growth that comes from marital effort or marital funds is marital. Others use different approache

A key person discount reduces a business's value because the business depends heavily on one person, and a buyer would pay less for that risk. There is no standard percentage, and anyone who quotes one without evidence is guessing. When the risk is real Dependence on an individual shows up in specific facts: customer or referral relationships held by the owner personally technical skill, licenses, or certifications that only the owner holds a franchise, dealer, or supplier ag

Which date a court uses is a legal question. What the business was worth on each candidate date is a financial one, and the two numbers can be far apart. Why the date matters Candidate dates in a divorce typically include the date of separation, the date of filing, the date of trial, and the date of the decree. Courts have discretion in many jurisdictions, and the choice can be contested. Confirm with counsel which date your court is likely to use and whether the parties can

Most schedule problems in a financial expert engagement start with documents that arrive late, in the wrong format, or never. A complete first request avoids most of them. The insight: send the deadlines before the documents The court's scheduling order decides what is possible. Tell your expert the valuation date, the expert disclosure deadline, the discovery cutoff, and the trial date before anything else. Scope follows from those dates. An expert who knows the calendar can

Bias in a valuation report rarely looks like bias. It looks like a series of reasonable choices that all lean the same direction. The way to find it is to look at where the expert had discretion and ask whether each choice was explained. The insight: bias is a pattern, so one favorable choice proves nothing A business valuation involves dozens of judgments. Any single one can be defended. What reveals an advocate is direction. If the normalization adjustments, the discount ra

The profit and loss statement of a closely held business is built for the tax return, not for a court. The owner decides what to pay himself or herself, and that decision is rarely driven by what the job is worth. Why the number moves An owner's pay shows up in several places: W-2 wages, guaranteed payments, distributions, bonuses, retirement contributions, health insurance, a company vehicle, travel, and family members on payroll. In an S corporation, a low salary paired wit

In a medical or dental practice, most of the value is goodwill, and most of the dispute is over whose goodwill it is. Two kinds of goodwill Personal goodwill attaches to the individual doctor: reputation, referral relationships, patient loyalty to that provider, clinical skill. If the doctor leaves, it leaves too. Enterprise goodwill attaches to the practice and would pass to a buyer: the location, trained staff, scheduling and recall systems, payor and group contracts, patie