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DEFENSIBLE, USPAP-COMPLIANT ARTWORK APPRAISAL REPORTS — QUALIFIED FOR THE IRS, HAWAII 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 artwork in Hawaii for gifts to museums and other charities, for estate and gift tax filings, for insurance schedules and for property being divided in a divorce. Island collections mix work that trades nationally with work whose buyers are almost all here, and the two are priced from different sets of sales.
Donations
What a donation file needs is the price the piece would have brought on the date of the gift. We show the sales that support it and say plainly where the subject differs from them.
Estates
Date of death figures are read later by heirs, by the court and sometimes by a tax authority, so each work stands on its own evidence, and thin support behind an unsigned or attributed piece is disclosed rather than smoothed over.
Insurance
Humidity, sun and salt act on work kept in the islands: foxing on paper, cockling, lifted paint and corroded frame fittings all turn up, and each is priced instead of being noted in passing.
Households
Paintings in a Hawaii estate usually sit beside furniture, china and jewelry. We value the art on this page and take the remaining contents through our Hawaii personal property work, so one household stays inside one consistent set of figures.
Two questions decide a Hawaii figure: who the buyers for this particular work are, and what the paperwork proves about it. Freight sits on top of both whenever a work has to leave the islands to sell.
The market
Hawaii landscape and seascape painting, plantation era photography and carved work change hands heavily within the state, so the evidence comes from local salerooms and dealers. Work by mainland or international artists is priced against national records.
Documents
An exhibition label, a dealer's invoice or a named previous owner all lift what a work will bring, and a gap in that history pulls it down. The report sets out which of the two it found.
Two Hawaii rules sit outside the market and still move it: one takes certain objects out of lawful sale in the state entirely, the other sets how much of a charitable gift reaches the state return.
Prohibited material
20% by volume
The most of a Hawaii antique a covered part may be
Hawaii bars the sale, offer for sale, purchase, trade or barter of parts and products from elephant, rhinoceros, tiger, great ape, hippopotamus, lion, pangolin, cheetah, jaguar and leopard, and separately from sea turtle, monk seal, narwhal, whale, walrus and listed rays and sharks, along with mammoth. The antique exception is strict: the owner must document that the piece is not less than one hundred years old, the covered material must be under twenty per cent of the object by volume, and it must be a fixed component rather than the primary source of the item's value. Distribution to a beneficiary of an estate or trust is allowed separately, and traditional cultural practices protected by the state constitution sit outside the prohibition. For a piece of scrimshaw, a carved tusk or a tortoiseshell box, the first question a Hawaii valuation faces is whether a lawful market for it exists in the state at all.
Donations
$16,000
The Hawaii standard deduction a joint return starts from
For taxable years beginning after December 31, 2025, Hawaii's standard deduction is $16,000 on a joint return, $12,000 for a head of household and $8,000 for a single filer, and it steps up again for years after 2027. A charitable gift of art changes a Hawaii return only where the donor claims deductions individually instead of taking that standard figure, so the larger deduction is the first hurdle a donor clears. Hawaii also keeps the federal overall limitation on those individual deductions operative, at the thresholds that applied for federal tax year 2009, although the limitation is suspended at the federal level.
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:
Documented ownership history can add a 10 to 30 percent premium by evidencing authenticity and linking a work to important owners or exhibitions, while condition problems can cut value 20 to 50 percent. Provenance records, condition reports, and prior sale invoices are exactly what we cite alongside comparable sales in the appraisal report.
Under HRS § 560:3-706, the personal representative must inventory the estate within three months of appointment, listing each item at fair market value as of the date of death. HRS § 560:3-707 lets the representative hire a qualified, disinterested appraiser for artwork whose value is in reasonable doubt, with the appraiser's name shown on the inventory.
No. Hawaii imposes no recurring personal property tax on ownership of art, antiques, or collectibles, so appraisals there are driven by insurance scheduling, estate administration, charitable donation, and divorce rather than annual tax filings. For IRS purposes, donations of art claimed over $5,000 still require a qualified appraisal.
Yes. Under HRS § 236E-8, tangible personal property with a Hawaii situs enters the Hawaii estate tax calculation even for nonresident decedents, and the tax reaches Hawaii net taxable estates above $1,000,000 at graduated rates running from 10 percent up to 20 percent on amounts over $10,000,000. A collection physically located in the islands therefore needs defensible date-of-death values even when the rest of the estate sits on the mainland.
Often yes. Artwork purchased from an unlicensed out-of-state seller and imported for personal or business use is subject to Hawaii use tax at 4 percent, or 4.5 percent where a county surcharge applies, calculated on landed value including shipping, insurance, and related costs. That landed-value basis matters for collectors, since freight on large works adds meaningfully to the taxable figure.
