Since leaving the IRS and opening his own firm, Michael Gregory (Michael Gregory Consulting LLC) has reviewed many business valuation reports. He finds enough errors to typically generate a four- to six-page paper of significant comments followed up by a discussion of the documentation provided.

“What does this tell me?” he writes in his recent book Business Appraisals and the IRS.“It tells me that you should have a third party conduct a real review of your work.” And this should not just be an afterthought, he says. It should be made a formal part of the work flow. The review should cover readability as well as technical competency, including math in spreadsheets. This will help prevent many of the more common errors Gregory saw during his stint with the IRS and, since then, in scores of reports by business valuation expert witnesses in the private sector.