Our rates, published.

What we charge, by the work

These are the rates for work performed by an Enrolled Agent, admitted to practice before the IRS. What moves a rate up the list is liability, credential requirement, and how much of the judgment is ours rather than the software's. Work that genuinely requires a CPA is priced separately, below.

These are base rates, and complexity is priced in hours rather than in the rate. A return with three states, two rentals and a year of digital asset activity is billed at the same rate as a straightforward one. It simply takes longer, and the written estimate tells you how much longer before you agree to it.

All rates are per hour, in US dollars, and are billed in tenth-of-an-hour increments. Where several rates could apply to one engagement, the work is billed at the rate for the task actually being performed, not at the highest rate on the file.

You should not pay for a CPA when you do not need one, and sometimes you do need one. Most tax work — returns, planning, notices, representation before the IRS — is fully within an Enrolled Agent's authority, and billing it at a CPA's rate is a cost with nothing behind it. Where an engagement genuinely calls for a CPA, you get one, and you are told why before the rate changes. The reverse holds too: the CPA rate is for work that warrants a CPA, not for any work a CPA happens to do. A task inside the scope above is billed at that task's rate regardless of who performs it. Firms that bill everything at one rate are not making either distinction on your behalf.

On the planning line. That work is structural and analytical: how a plan is allocated and which vehicles it is built in, an independent check on the fees and costs buried inside it, and verification of the return a given investment actually produced. It is the second opinion, not the first one. We do not select positions, recommend securities, manage money, or sell products, and we are not a registered investment adviser. We accept no commission from anyone whose fees we are checking, which is the whole reason the check is worth anything.

You get an estimate before we start

A rate on its own tells you very little. What you want to know is the number at the end, so the rate card is only half of how this works.

• A thirty-minute consultation, at no charge, to establish what the work actually is
• A written estimate of hours at the applicable rate, before any work begins
• Nothing starts until you have accepted that estimate
• If the work is going to exceed the estimate, you hear it before it does, not on the invoice
• Recurring work, such as a monthly close or an annual return, is quoted as a standing figure once we have seen a full cycle
• Planning time is credited against the engagement that follows it, rather than billed twice

What is inside the fee

None of the following is billed as an extra. If a firm charges separately for these, that is worth knowing before you compare rates.

• Review of the work by a credentialed preparer before anything is filed
• Electronic filing of the federal and state returns
• Questions by phone or email while the work is in progress
• A copy of the return and its supporting schedules, retained in your file
• Responding to a notice caused by an error we made, at no charge
• Telling you when an election or a filing position is not worth taking

What adds hours to a return

Since the work is billed by the hour, the honest version of a price list is a list of what takes longer. Every item below is a fact you already know about your own situation, so you can judge roughly where you sit before you call.

• A second or further state. Each additional resident or nonresident return is separate work with its own allocation rules.
• New York, California or New Jersey. New York is the clearest case: a state return, a separate city return for New York City or Yonkers, its own nonresident allocation rules, and a notice process that generates real follow-up. Texas is the clearest case the other way, since there is no individual return to file at all.
• Rental property. Each property beyond the first carries its own depreciation schedule, basis history and passive-activity tracking.
• K-1s. A handful is routine. Volume, tiered entities and late-arriving K-1s are not.
• Cryptocurrency and digital assets. Above roughly fifty transactions, or any staking, mining, lending or DeFi activity. Multi-year reconstruction is a separate engagement, quoted on its own.
• Foreign accounts. FinCEN Form 114 or Form 8938 reporting, and the analysis of whether either is required.
• Records that have to be rebuilt. Bookkeeping that was never done, or done wrong, is cleanup work and is quoted as cleanup before we start rather than absorbed into a return.
• Arriving late. A complete file after March 15 competes with everything else already in the queue.

When a quoted fee changes, and when it does not

A published rate is only useful if the conditions attached to it are published too. An estimate is based on what we were told and what we were given. It moves only for the reasons below, and only after we have told you.

• The scope changes: an entity, a state, a year or a schedule that was not in the original description
• Records arrive incomplete, in a form that has to be rebuilt before it can be used, or in pieces across several weeks
• Complexity surfaces that was not visible at scoping, such as unreported activity, a missing basis history, or a prior return that has to be corrected first
• The work crosses into a different rate on the card, in which case we tell you which rate and why before the hours are incurred
• You ask for work outside the engagement, which is quoted separately rather than absorbed quietly

What does not change the fee: the size of your refund, the amount of tax you owe, how the return comes out, or how long the IRS takes with it after we file.

Terms attached to these published rates

Publishing a fee schedule carries obligations under Treasury Department Circular 230, which governs practice before the Internal Revenue Service. We would rather state them here than have them apply invisibly.

• We hold to what is on this page. Circular 230 §10.30(b)(1) permits a practitioner to publish hourly rates, and §10.30(b)(2) provides that no more than the published rate may be charged for at least 30 calendar days after the last date the schedule was published. The rate you are quoted is the rate on this page on the day you were quoted.
• These are rates, not an estimate of your tax. Every figure here is the cost of the work. None of it is a projection of what you will owe or receive.
• Our fee is never a share of your refund. Circular 230 §10.27 restricts contingent fees in matters before the IRS, and we do not charge them for return preparation in any event. A larger refund does not produce a larger invoice.
• We do not accept commissions. Our fee, paid by you, is the only compensation we receive for the work we do. No provider, platform or product pays us anything for sending you to them, which is why nothing on this site tries to.
• Third-party costs are yours, and are disclosed before they are incurred. State filing fees, entity registration fees, certified postage and any outside specialist are passed through at cost, and we tell you before committing you to one.
• An estimate is written, and it comes before the work. Where we cannot yet tell you how many hours something will take, we say so, and scope it first rather than opening the meter.
• Some engagements are quoted rather than billed hourly. Multi-year cleanup and cryptocurrency reconciliation are quoted as a fixed fee after scoping, because nobody should be billed by the hour for a job of unknown size. Recurring work is quoted as a standing figure once we have seen a full cycle.
• Existing clients continue on the fee already arranged with them. These rates are a ceiling on what we may charge for the work described, not a repricing of engagements already in place. If your fee is changing, you hear it from us directly and before the work, not by reading it here.

Questions we get about price