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Louisiana business appraisers providing valuations for donations, M&A, gift tax, and IRA conversion, prepared in accordance with USPAP and IRS requirements. AppraiseItNow appraises small businesses, partnerships, corporations, professional practices, and franchises across Louisiana, including New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Shreveport.
DEFENSIBLE, USPAP-COMPLIANT BUSINESS APPRAISAL REPORTS — QUALIFIED FOR THE IRS, LOUISIANA COURTS, LENDERS, INSURERS, AND MORE.
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Owner & CEO
Joe founded AppraiseItNow to make a certified, USPAP-compliant appraisal as simple to order as anything else online. A former Bain & Company strategy consultant, Joe leads the entire team and specializes in strategy, growth, and the firm's tech capabilities.
Business Valuation Expert & Appraiser
ASA, ABV, and CFA charterholder. Since 2016 Justin has valued businesses for estate and gift tax, purchase price allocations, fairness opinions, lending, and buy-sell agreements, across manufacturing, services, retail, and pre-revenue biotech.
Business Valuation Expert & Appraiser
Accredited Senior Appraiser with the American Society of Appraisers. Raymond values capital stock, business enterprises, stock options, and intangible assets.
Client Success Manager
Manages each engagement from the first enquiry to the delivered report, and keeps you posted at every step along the way.
American Society of AppraisersAccredited Senior Appraiser
The Appraisal FoundationAuthorized by Congress as the source of appraisal standardsAppraiseItNow appraises closely held businesses in Louisiana for charitable gifts, gift and estate tax returns, successions, community property partitions, shareholder buyouts, and sales between owners. Machinery, rolling stock and shop equipment sitting inside the balance sheet are valued as their own exercise, which is what our Louisiana equipment appraisals cover, and the business conclusion draws on that work instead of guessing at it.
Family companies
Unless the assets are the business, earnings carry the conclusion: what the company actually produces for its owners once compensation is reset to a market rate and one time items are taken back out.
Professional practices
Where the clients belong to one person, the question is how much of the earnings would survive that person walking out. Louisiana answers part of that by statute in a partition, and the rest is an appraisal question.
Partial interests
What a fractional owner may do with the interest, what has actually been distributed over the years, and who decides both of those are what separate a part interest from a share of the whole.
Louisiana files almost always arrive with a date attached, and the date is rarely today. A succession needs the value on the day of death. A partition needs it as of the day the statute fixes. A gift return needs it on the day the interest moved. That date is settled first, because it decides which statements, which backlog and which market conditions the conclusion gets built from.
Successions
Statements that close weeks later are evidence, not the answer. The report is dated to the day the succession has to report, and says what was knowable about the company on that day.
Gifts and sales
A gift of an interest, a buy sell triggered by a death, and a sale between family members each fix their own date. Pricing one of them on a later day is an easy way to have the report questioned.
Two statutes do more to a Louisiana business appraisal than any tax rule in the state. One takes something out of the value when a community is divided. The other puts something back in when a shareholder is bought out.
Partitions
Personal goodwill
comes out of a Louisiana partition valuation, while the goodwill that belongs to the business stays in
R.S. 9:2801.2 is short and decisive. "In a proceeding to partition the community, the court may include, in the valuation of any community-owned corporate, commercial, or professional business, the goodwill of the business. However, that portion of the goodwill attributable to any personal quality of the spouse awarded the business shall not be included in the valuation of a business." The appraisal work that follows is finding where one ends and the other begins: how much of what the business earns is tied to the person keeping it, through their own relationships, reputation and skill, and how much would survive their departure in the name, the location, the staff and the recurring customers. A valuation prepared for a Louisiana partition has to answer that split on the page rather than report one goodwill figure and leave it there.
Buyouts
No discount
for lack of marketability or minority status belongs in fair value under the Louisiana corporation law
R.S. 12:1-1301 defines fair value, the standard in an appraisal right, as the value of the corporation's shares "determined immediately before the effectuation of the corporate action to which the shareholder objects," reached "using customary and current valuation concepts and techniques generally employed for similar businesses in the context of the transaction requiring appraisal," and "without discounting for lack of marketability or minority status," with a narrow exception for certain amendments to the articles. The same definition governs an oppressed shareholder who withdraws under R.S. 12:1-1435, where the value is set as of the effective date of the withdrawal notice. A gift or estate appraisal of that identical block, written to fair market value, can therefore reach a materially different number, and the engagement has to name which standard it is answering before anyone relies on it.
What clients say we are known for
Across 100+ published AppraiseItNow reviews the picture is consistent: every one is from a client who paid us for an appraisal, and the three things they raise most often are that they would hire us again, how quickly we answer, and how much research is visible in the report.
Responsive, professional, first class deliverables -- especially considering that that the appraised assets are extremely complex financial assets with little by way of comps. The deliverable satisfied my accountants and advisers as being more than adequate to support the valuation needed to complete a conversion to a Roth IRA
Business Valuation Appraisal for IRA Conversion
Joe and Aron were extremely impressive - the entire process went very smoothly. They were always quick to respond to any questions I had and could not have been more helpful. They were aware of some tight time restrictions I had and made sure I received my reports in a timely fashion. I highly recommend them to anyone needing a valuation.
Business Valuation Appraisal for Charitable Donation
I used AppraiseItNow to examine a contribution to a foundation. Their work was quick, thorough, and easy to work with, as they’ve developed a simple system for uploading documents. I plan to use them again.
Business Valuation Appraisal for Charitable Donation
The team was highly knowledgeable, helpful, and efficient. I highly recommend their appraisal services, especially for private companies.
Business Valuation Appraisal for IRA Conversion
I found them professional & responsive. The report was quite thorough as well.
Business Valuation Appraisal for Charitable Donation
From the start they were very responsive, price competitive, and had a quick turn around time. Thank you so much to Joe who was very sweet in responding to my emails; I am looking forward to utilizing AppraiseItNow for many years to come.
Given the USPAP-compliant nature of AppraiseItNow’s appraisal reports, we prepare our deliverables for major legal, tax, and financial reporting purposes for individual and commercial clients.
Popular uses of our appraisal reports include:
A professional valuation considers the income, market, and asset-based approaches, then applies the ones that best fit the company. Standards from the AICPA, ASA, NACVA, and the IRS all expect each approach to be at least considered, and a credible report documents why any approach was set aside rather than silently ignoring it.
Private transaction databases such as DealStats, BIZCOMPS, IBA Market Data, and GF Data, plus guideline public company evidence from SEC filings. These sources record what real buyers paid for comparable companies, which is far stronger support than generalized industry chatter.
No. Louisiana imposes no state estate or inheritance tax, so a business interest transferring at death faces only federal estate tax, and only above the federal exclusion. A defensible fair market value appraisal still matters for federal reporting and for establishing basis for the heirs.
Not on its own. Professional standards treat rules of thumb strictly as secondary reasonableness checks because they ignore company-specific earnings quality, growth prospects, and risk. Two Louisiana businesses with identical revenue can deserve very different values once those factors are analyzed.
