Company: EQS
Filing Date: 2025-04-10
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001712543-25-000016
Chunk: 24

Company: EQUUS TOTAL RETURN, INC.
Filing Date: 2025-04-10
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 8
Chunk 24
---
 Exchange Commission and the PCAOB.

We conducted
our audits in accordance with the standards of the PCAOB. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain reasonable
assurance about whether the financial statements and the selected per share data and ratios are free of material misstatement, whether
due to error or fraud. The Fund is not required to have, nor were we engaged to perform, an audit of its internal control over financial
reporting. As part of our audits we are required to obtain an understanding of internal control over financial reporting but not for the
purpose of expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of the Fund’s internal control over financial reporting. Accordingly, we express
no such opinion.

Our audits
included performing procedures to assess the risks of material misstatement of the financial statements and the selected per share data
and ratios, whether due to error or fraud, and performing procedures that respond to those risks. Such procedures included examining,
on a test basis, evidence regarding the amounts and disclosures in the financial statements and the selected per share data and ratios.
Our procedures included confirmation of securities owned as of December 31, 2024, and 2023 by correspondence with the custodians. Our
audits also included evaluating the accounting principles used and significant estimates made by management, as well as evaluating the
overall presentation of the financial statements and the selected per share data and ratios. We believe that
our audits provide a reasonable basis for our opinion.

Critical
Audit Matter

The critical audit matter
communicated below is a matter arising from the current period audit of the financial statements that was communicated or required to
be communicated to the audit committee and that: (1) relates to accounts or disclosures that are material to the financial statements
and (2) involved our especially challenging, subjective, or complex judgments. The communication of the critical audit matter does not
alter in any way our opinion on the financial statements, taken as a whole, and we are not, by communicating the critical audit matter
below, providing a separate opinion on the critical audit matter or on the accounts or disclosures to which it relates.

  39  

  TableOfContents  

Valuation
of Limited Liability Company Investments

As
described in Note 3 to the financial statements, the Fund’s control investment portfolio has a total estimated fair value of $27.5
million at December 31, 2024, which includes $17.0 million of limited liability company investments. Management has determined that these
limited liability company