Pricing
How I price
A flat fee, in writing, before I start, with the number set by a complexity score rather than a clock or a conversation about what you can afford.
I charge a flat fee, quoted in writing before any work starts. No clock, no hourly rate, no invoice that shows up as a surprise after the return is filed.
What is unusual is where the number comes from. Your situation gets scored against a complexity model built out of countable facts: income sources, states filed, schedules and forms required, entities involved, transactions to reconcile. The score sets the price. I do not move it because of what you do for a living, what your refund looks like, or how the week is going. Same inputs, same price, for any client.
That is a narrow claim and I want to keep it narrow. Flat fees are common. Formulas are not exotic. The distinction is that the formula produces the number instead of my judgment, and that I show you which factors produced it.
One reason this works here and would not work everywhere: I do the work myself. There is no staff accountant whose hours have to be recovered, no partner reviewing a file he never opened, no utilization target to hit by March. The complexity of your return is the only variable in the price because it is the only variable there is.
The rest of this page is the specifics. The factors themselves, two returns scored against each other, what the written estimate says, what the fee does not cover, and when you actually pay.
The three ways this usually gets priced
Hourly. You pay for time, including the twenty minutes someone spent looking up a rule they should have known. The invoice arrives after the work, so you cannot evaluate the price until you have already bought. It also trains you not to call with questions, which is exactly backwards. And it penalizes speed: the faster and better a preparer gets, the less the same return earns.
Value-based. The fee is set by what the firm believes the work is worth to you. A return that saves a great deal of tax costs more than an identical return that saves very little. There is a real argument behind it. The consequence is that two clients with the same forms, the same states, and the same hours of work can pay very different amounts, and the gap gets settled in a conversation rather than against a scale.
Flat fee, estimated by feel. This is what most small firms do, and it is the closest thing to my model. An experienced preparer looks at your documents and names a number that feels right. The instinct is usually good. It is not consistent, and the reasoning is never written down anywhere you could check it.
The sequence, start to finish
Complexity assessment
During the initial consultation I walk through your prior-year return and your current-year facts and score them against the model. This happens before there is an engagement letter, an invoice, or any obligation on your part.
Written estimate before work begins
You get the number in writing along with the factors that produced it. Nothing starts until you have seen it and agreed to it. If you decide against it you owe nothing, and the estimate is yours to compare against anyone else's.
Final price against the same scale
When the return is finished and the actual complexity is confirmed, the fee settles against that same scale. It moves down as readily as up. Either way I name the factor that changed before I show you the revised number.
What counts as complexity
Complexity here means countable things, not how hard the work felt. These are the factors that move a score:
- Number of income sources: one W-2, versus a W-2 plus two 1099-NECs plus a brokerage account
- Number of states, and whether any of them are nonresident returns
- Which schedules and forms are required: Schedule C, Schedule E, Form 8829, Form 1116
- Entities in the picture: an 1120-S, a partnership K-1, a trust
- Transaction volume: a dozen stock lots is not the same job as four thousand, and an exchange export from a crypto account is the same problem
- Foreign accounts or foreign income, including FBAR and Form 8938 obligations
- Prior-year cleanup: unfiled years, an amendment, or a basis schedule nobody ever built
Two returns, scored against that list
A factor list is easy to nod along to, so here are two returns run against it. Both are hypothetical, and I picked them because the distance between them is typical.
Return A. One hospital W-2, one state of residence, a mortgage interest statement, an HSA, and a brokerage account with eleven sales. Count the factors: two income sources, one state, Schedule D and Form 8949 and nothing else, no entities, low transaction volume, no foreign accounts, no cleanup. That sits near the simple end of the scale in six of the seven categories.
Return B. The same W-2, plus a 1099-NEC for locum shifts worked in two other states, a K-1 from a surgery center LLC, a rental house sold in August, and a depreciation schedule the prior preparer never carried forward. Count again: three income sources, three states with two of them nonresident, Schedule C and Schedule E and Form 4562 and Form 4797, one pass-through entity, and prior-year cleanup that has to happen before the current return can be started at all. Five of the seven factors move, and none of them is a judgment about the person who owns the return.
The factors also do not weigh the same. A partnership K-1 with basis and at-risk questions attached is a larger event than a second 1099-INT. What you can do without ever speaking to me is count your own: source documents, states, forms, entities, transactions, and whether last year's file was left in a condition someone can build on. Those counts are the whole input.
What is not a complexity factor
Your income. Your job title. The size of your refund. How urgently you need this done, or whether you sound like someone who could absorb a bigger number.
A physician with one hospital W-2, an HSA, and a 403(b) has a simpler return than a general contractor with a Schedule C, equipment purchases, and work in three states. The physician pays less. Under value-based pricing that outcome is not guaranteed, and that is the main reason I do not use it.
Why the number itself is not printed on this page
If I were reading this page I would have one objection, and it is the right one: if the model is objective and consistent, why can't I see it? Better to answer that than leave it sitting there.
Most of it you can see, and it is above. The factors are published in full. The sequence is published. Your own estimate names which of those factors your return triggered, so you can check the number against the list instead of taking it on faith.
What is not published is a rate card. A range wide enough to be honest across every return I take would be too wide to tell you anything useful. A narrow one would be wrong for most people who read it, and it would be most wrong for the reader with the K-1 he did not think to mention. The model scores facts, and I cannot score facts I have not read. So the number arrives after I have read your prior-year return, which takes one conversation and costs nothing.
If that still reads as a promise you cannot check, check it. Get the estimate, then get one somewhere else, and see which of the two can explain where its number came from.
What is actually on the written estimate
The estimate is a document, not a figure named over the phone. What it contains:
- The scope: which returns, which tax years, which states, and which entities are covered
- The complexity factors your situation triggered, named one by one rather than summarized
- The flat fee that score produces
- What sits outside that scope, listed rather than implied, each with its own number if you want that work too
- The conditions under which the final price can move, and in which direction
- No signature required to receive it, and nothing owed if you read it and stop
The estimate is free, it arrives before you have signed anything, and if you decide against it you owe nothing. It is also yours to keep and to shop. I would rather lose an engagement to a better quote than win one because you had nothing to measure mine against.
What the flat fee does not cover
The carve-outs, in one place and complete, because a carve-out you learn about in April is not a carve-out, it is a surprise. Everything on this list gets scored against the same scale and quoted in writing before it starts, and none of it appears for the first time on an invoice. Resolution work and planning are priced exactly the way preparation is.
- Prior-year cleanup: books that do not tie to anything, or a depreciation or basis schedule that has to be rebuilt from original purchase records
- Unfiled years, priced per year rather than folded into the current return
- Amending a return I did not prepare, which has to be read from the ground up before it can be corrected
- Representation in an examination, an appeal, or a collections matter, which is its own engagement under a Form 2848 power of attorney
- Bookkeeping as an ongoing service, as distinct from the one-time cleanup a return sometimes requires
- Planning work, meaning the decisions that get made before December 31 rather than reported after it
- Not on this list: a math-error or document-matching notice on a return I prepared. Answering that is part of the job
When you pay, and what happens if you stop
No deposit and no retainer. Nothing is due at the consultation, nothing is due when the estimate lands, and nothing is due when you sign the engagement letter. The invoice is step 5 of five in the portal, and step 5 comes after the return has been prepared, reviewed, and signed. If you read the estimate and walk, the whole thing has cost you a conversation.
The return is not held for payment. Your signature on Form 8879 is what authorizes electronic filing. Once it is there I transmit the return and send you the acceptance confirmation. The invoice posts in the portal alongside the finished return, and paying it closes step five. Your filing deadline is not leverage, and I would look hard at any arrangement that made it into leverage.
If you stop partway through. Before the engagement letter is signed there is nothing to settle. After it is signed, if you change your mind, you owe for the work already done, scored against the same scale that produced the estimate, and you see that number and the reasoning before it goes anywhere. Your documents are yours either way, and you get the file back in whatever state it is in. That last part should be table stakes. It is not always, which is worth knowing before you hand anyone a shoebox.
This is not always the cheapest option
Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. If your return scores simple, you will likely pay less here than at a firm that priced you by feel after learning what you do for a living. If it scores complex, you may pay more than the low number someone quoted before they found out about the K-1.
Consistency is the part worth paying for, and the reason is mechanical. A price set by feel is a price that can be set against you: it drifts with how full the calendar is, how anxious you sounded, and what the preparer guesses you can bear. A formula cannot do any of that. It also lets me tell you, at no cost to myself, what would make next year cheaper. Consolidate the third brokerage account. Stop filing in a state you left two years ago. Get the bookkeeping current in November instead of handing me eleven months of receipts in March. Under hourly billing that advice shrinks my own invoice, which is a strange thing to ask a person to volunteer.
And if your return is one W-2 and the standard deduction, consumer software will get it right for a fraction of what I charge. so I will say it now instead of taking the engagement. There is more of this on the fit page, which spends most of its length talking people out of hiring me.
Hunter did my taxes last year. Super professional, straightforward, prompt, and fair. I will never do my own taxes again.
Getting a number for your situation
The complexity assessment happens during the initial consultation. It is free, there is no obligation, and it is not a sales call with a scoring model bolted on. Describe your situation through the contact form. If you have last year's return handy, say so — I will open your portal account and you can put it in the vault rather than attaching it to anything. You get a written estimate and the factors behind it, and then you decide.
The rest of the process, from that first message through signing the finished return, is laid out step by step on how it works.
Try It
What "complexity" actually looks like.
No two returns score the same. Here is roughly where the scale runs, in plain terms — pick one.
A simple return looks like…
- One employer, one W-2
- Standard deduction
- A single state, no side income
Lower complexity score → lower price on the same scale.
A moderate return looks like…
- Moonlighting, locums, or other 1099 income
- A rental property
- Two states filed in one year
A middling complexity score → a middling price on the same scale.
A complex return looks like…
- S-corp or partnership K-1s from a group practice
- Equity compensation — RSUs, ISOs, a liquidity event
- Multiple entities or a foreign account
Higher complexity score → higher price — but still the same scale everyone else is on.
The Comparison
Why a formula beats a feeling.
Three ways a firm can arrive at your number, and what each one does to you.
Hourly Billing
- Efficiency is penalized — a faster CPA earns less
- The final invoice is a surprise until it arrives
- Clients hesitate to ask questions, worried it adds to the clock
Flat Fee, Estimated by Feel
- Set by an experienced preparer's gut sense, not a formula
- Two similar returns can land at slightly different fees
- The reasoning behind the number is rarely made explicit
Flat Fee, Set by Formula
- The same objective scale for every client, every time
- A firm estimate before any work begins
- Working faster benefits you, not my invoice
Further reading
Questions, answered plainly.
Will the price change once you start my return?
It can move in either direction, but only against the same scale, and never because of how long the work took me. If your documents reveal complexity that was not on the table at intake, say a K-1 nobody mentioned or a rental sold in August, the price reflects that. If the return turns out simpler than the estimate, the price comes down to match. You see the reason before you see the revised number.
What actually makes a return complex?
Countable things: how many income sources you have, how many states you file in, which schedules and forms are required, whether an S-corp, partnership, or trust is involved, how many transactions have to be reconciled, whether foreign accounts are in play, and whether prior years need cleanup. Same checklist for everyone. None of it asks what you earn or what you can afford.
Why don't you publish a price list?
Because a range honest enough to cover every return I take would be too wide to be useful, and a narrow one would be wrong for exactly the reader who most needs it. The model scores facts, and I cannot score facts I have not read. What I do publish is the factor list itself, and your own estimate names which of those factors your return triggered, so the number can be checked rather than trusted.
Do you take a deposit, and when do I actually pay?
No deposit and no retainer. Nothing is owed at the consultation, at the estimate, or at signing the engagement letter. The invoice is step 5 of the five portal steps, so it arrives after the return is prepared and after you have reviewed and signed it. Your e-signature on Form 8879 authorizes the e-file, I transmit the return and send you the acceptance confirmation, and the invoice posts alongside the finished return rather than gating it.
What if I stop partway through the engagement?
Before the engagement letter is signed, nothing is owed and there is nothing to settle. After it is signed, you owe for the work already completed, scored against the same scale that produced your estimate, and you see that number and the reasoning behind it before it goes anywhere. Your documents come back to you either way, in whatever state the file is in.
Is this the cheapest option I will find?
Not always, and I will not pretend otherwise. A simple return usually costs less here than at a firm pricing by feel. A genuinely complex one may cost more than a lowball quote from someone who has not looked at your K-1 yet. What the price always is, is consistent, and I can tell you exactly which factors drove yours.
How is this different from any other flat fee?
It is a flat fee. The difference is upstream of the number. Most flat-fee firms arrive at the figure by feel, which is an experienced guess that varies a little by client and by day. Mine comes out of a complexity score built from objective factors, so the same inputs produce the same price no matter who is asking. It is not a fixed price list that ignores your situation either, since the score is built entirely from your situation.
What does the flat fee not cover?
Prior-year cleanup, meaning books that do not tie or a basis schedule that has to be rebuilt. Unfiled years, which are priced per year rather than folded into the current return. Amending a return I did not prepare. Representation in an examination, appeal, or collections matter, which is its own engagement under a Form 2848. Ongoing bookkeeping, and planning work done before December 31. All of it is scored on the same scale and quoted in writing first. Answering a matching notice on a return I prepared is included.
Do I see the estimate before I commit to anything?
Yes. The estimate comes out of the free initial consultation and a look at your prior-year return, before any engagement letter is signed and before you owe anything. Nothing begins until you have the number in writing and tell me to proceed. If you take that estimate and shop it, that is a reasonable thing to do.
What if my situation changes mid-year?
Tell me when it happens rather than in April. Starting a side business in June, taking a contract in a second state, or selling a rental in August all change your complexity score, and I re-price against the same scale. The larger point is that the same event reported in August is a planning question, and reported in April it is only a filing problem. One of those still has options attached to it.
The first conversation is free.
Tell me what's going on and I'll tell you plainly whether you need me.
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