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Artwork appraisals in New Jersey for donations, estate tax, insurance, and divorce, prepared in accordance with USPAP and IRS requirements. AppraiseItNow appraises paintings, sculptures, prints, photography, and mixed media across New Jersey, including Newark, Jersey City, and Trenton.
DEFENSIBLE, USPAP-COMPLIANT ANTIQUE ARTWORK APPRAISAL REPORTS — QUALIFIED FOR THE IRS, NEW JERSEY 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.
Personal Property Appraiser
ISA Accredited Member with 30 years in the trade, from running estate sales and an auction gallery to appraising luxury apparel, furniture, artwork, antiques, and business assets, primarily for IRS tax filings.
Personal Property Appraiser
ISA Accredited Member specializing in Asian art, with a Master's from SOAS and a Postgraduate Diploma in Asian Art. Ashley chairs the ISA's Antiques, Furnishings, and Decorative Arts committee and appraises for charitable donation, insurance, and equitable distribution.
Client Success Manager
Manages each engagement from the first enquiry to the delivered report, and keeps you posted at every step along the way.
International Society of AppraisersAccredited Member
The Appraisal FoundationAuthorized by Congress as the source of appraisal standardsAppraiseItNow appraises paintings, works on paper, sculpture, photography and decorative arts in New Jersey for charitable gifts, inheritance tax filings, insurance schedules and equitable distribution. Every conclusion rests on prices works actually brought, never on what a gallery happened to be asking.
Charitable gifts
A deduction rests on the market a piece would genuinely change hands in, which is rarely the retail replacement figure an insurance schedule carries. We name the sales behind the number and the market level each of them came from.
Inheritance filings
Work in an estate is valued back to one fixed day, and the results that count are the ones that closed around it. Where a piece has no close comparable we widen the search on the record and say what we widened it to, rather than quietly substituting a different artist.
Insurance and divorce
A schedule written for coverage asks what a work would cost to put back on the wall at retail. A settlement asks what it would bring if it were sold. A report prepared for one of those does not carry over to the other, and using it that way invites the challenge.
Three things move an antique work further than anything else: who made it, what has happened to it since, and how completely its ownership can be traced. Each is researched on its own and its effect on the conclusion is written down.
Attribution
Catalogue raisonné entries, exhibition records and earlier scholarship either carry an attribution or they do not. The value follows what that record will bear, not what a previous owner was told at the time of purchase.
Condition and history
Relining, overpaint, trimmed margins and light damage all move a work down a range that was wide to begin with. Gaps in the ownership record narrow the pool of buyers prepared to bid at all, and a narrower pool shows up in the result.
Two of these decide what a work costs its owner or an heir. The third decides how it has to be written down when the estate files.
Filing
Item by item
is how a specifically devised work has to be reported on a New Jersey inheritance return
The Division of Taxation's instructions for the resident inheritance tax return are explicit: where a will leaves particular items of personal property to a named beneficiary, jewelry, automobiles and artwork among the examples given, each item is listed separately on Schedule B-4 with its own estimated value. One line reading household contents will not carry a specifically devised work. Waivers are not required for household goods and personal effects, but those items still have to be reported on the return that is filed.
Threshold
$25,000
passes to a sibling before New Jersey inheritance tax begins
New Jersey charges no inheritance tax on transfers to a parent, grandparent, spouse, child or grandchild. A brother or sister of the deceased, or the surviving spouse of a child, takes the first $25,000 free and is taxed from there, beginning at 11 percent. When the bulk of what passes is a single painting or one collection, the figure put on it is what decides whether the exemption absorbs the transfer or the return carries tax.
Use tax
6.625%
follows a work bought out of state and delivered to a New Jersey address
New Jersey imposes use tax at 6.625 percent where taxable property is bought for use in the state and the seller collects no sales tax, or collects it at a lower rate. Where the work is bought in another state and received there, a credit is allowed for the tax paid to that state. Where it is bought in another state and delivered into New Jersey, no credit is allowed at all, and the tax falls on the purchase price including delivery charges. That cost sits on top of the hammer price; it is not part of what the work is worth.
What clients say we are known for
Across 80+ 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.
The appraisal was done very well. Since he was a local artist here in Charleston, SC, they took the time to study and review Jim Booth’s art. His work has made him extremely famous, which can make an appraisal challenging, but they did a superb job and clearly explained how they arrived at the appraisal value. I highly recommend Appraise It Now and will use them again for all my artwork.
Artwork Appraisal for Insurance Coverage
AppraiseItNow did an excellent job appraising our unique art collection. Joe was always prompt and responsive, and he and his team delivered a thorough, well-supported appraisal in just a couple of weeks, even during the holiday season. I was genuinely impressed. Thank you for the great work!
Artwork Appraisal for Insurance Coverage
AppraiseItNow was amazing! My father passed with a large volume of artwork & I had no idea what it was worth. Their team was incredibly helpful and quick to respond with text and/or email to any questions as well as a status update along the way. Highly recommend!
Artwork Appraisal for Probate
I recently requested a retroactive appraisal for fine art from AppraiseItNow. I received excellent service from intake to delivery. The appraisal was delivered on time and the content of the appraisal absolutely met my expectations!
Artwork Appraisal
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.
Very thorough and professional — great communication and outstanding service. Highly impressed with their work!
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:
Yes. Under N.J. Admin. Code 18:26-8.8(b), the Director of Taxation may require that values for tangible personal property subject to the transfer inheritance tax be supported by an appraisal from a broker, dealer, or other person with expert knowledge of that market. A documented appraisal prepared up front avoids scrambling when the Division asks.
The decedent's date of death. New Jersey regulation values all property subject to the transfer inheritance tax at its clear market value on that date, so paintings and collections must be appraised retrospectively to date-of-death market conditions, not to today's market. New Jersey no longer imposes a separate estate tax for deaths after January 1, 2018; the inheritance tax is the operative regime.
From realized sales, never asking prices. We research auction records and dealer transactions through sources like Sotheby's and Christie's archives, Invaluable, and MutualArt, then adjust for attribution, condition, restoration, size, and provenance, documenting the rationale for each adjustment so another appraiser could follow the reasoning.
Treating advertised prices as market evidence and using the wrong market for the assignment. Asking prices routinely exceed what works actually bring, and a retail replacement figure meant for insurance will overstate value in a donation, estate, or equitable distribution context. A report should name its value definition and market level explicitly.
