ALPS Price Meadows will not administer an investor fund that is not audited and we do not audit our own work. Accordingly, we work closely with your auditor at the beginning of each year to prove your numbers and to get your tax forms out. Audit and tax season is very busy around here as we generally have outside auditors in the office for two full months from January 15th on. One advantage of third party administration over self-administration is an expected reduction in audit costs, plus the auditors spend most of their time with us rather than the manager. Typically, ALPS Price Meadows-administered funds see fee reductions of 30% or more. We automatically create a menu of approximately 20 audit schedules for every fund.
ALPS Price Meadows does tax allocations on an aggregate basis, usually using the general procedures of partial netting as provided for by the IRS. We have found partial netting to be superior to other methodologies such as "layering" as it can achieve fairer results, especially when a fund is managed for tax efficiency. Our tax allocations are an automated module within our partnership accounting system and are available monthly.