Losing $75K in 7 Seconds: Purchase Price Allocation 101
Monday, November 19th, 2007Last month our business valuation department was engaged by a pest control client, Kevin, owner of XYZ Pest Control, to advise him on setting up a stock gifting program. His goals are to gift stock annually to his children over the next 10 years or so, taking advantage of the Federal Annual Gift Tax exemption as a vehicle for saving for their college education. When we reviewed the financial and operational documents on XYZ, we realized that Kevin had made a few acquisitions over the last few years. XYZ’s most recent was the acquisition of a competitor - the purchase of the assets of an S corporation for $1,050,000. Upon digging into the numbers a little deeper, we realized something quite peculiarly, though not particularly surprising. The buyer and seller had allocated a very large portion of the purchase price, $480,000 to be exact, to a non-competition agreement. In this article, you are going to learn why this alarmed us and what you can do to avoid tax mistakes while doing deals.
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