Fees
What does a CPA cost?
It is a fair question and it deserves a real answer. Here is what actually drives the number, why you will not find a price list on this page, and how to get a firm quote without any obligation.
Why there is no price list here
Because a price list would be misleading. Two returns that look identical from the outside can be very different pieces of work, and a posted number would either be so low it is meaningless or so high it scares off the people it would have fit.
What you get instead is a fixed quote before any work starts. You will know the number in advance, in writing, and it will not move unless the scope moves. If something turns up mid-engagement that changes the picture, you hear about it then, not on the invoice.
What actually drives the fee
Nearly every quote comes down to some combination of these six things.
Which return you file
A straightforward individual return is a different piece of work than an 1120-S with shareholder basis or a 1065 with allocations. The form drives most of it.
How many moving parts
Rental properties, K-1s, brokerage activity, multiple states and self-employment income each add real time. Three rentals is not the same job as one.
The state of your records
A clean set of books is quick to work from. A shoebox, or a year of uncategorized transactions, means reconstruction happens before preparation can even start.
Whether anything changed
A year with a business started, a house sold, a move between states or an inheritance takes more analysis than a year that looks like the last one.
How much cleanup comes first
Unfiled prior years, an unresolved notice or books that need catching up are their own scope. They get quoted separately so you can see what is what.
Ongoing versus once a year
Monthly bookkeeping or payroll is recurring work priced on a monthly basis. A return is priced per engagement. Many clients do one and not the other.
How you get a number
- A free twenty-minute call. You describe the situation. Bring last year's return if you have it, because it answers most of the questions on its own.
- A written quote. A fixed fee for defined work, usually within a day or two of the call. Cleanup or prior-year work is quoted as its own line so nothing is buried.
- You decide. There is no follow-up sequence and nobody will chase you. If the answer is no, or not this year, that is a completely fine outcome.
What the fee includes
- A licensed CPA doing the work, not seasonal staff
- A review of the return with you before anything is filed
- Secure document handling through a client portal
- E-filing of federal and state returns
- Answers to questions during the year, not just in April
- A heads-up when something you did will change next year's bill
A note on the cheapest option
There is always someone cheaper. Sometimes that is the right call, and if your situation is genuinely simple you will be told so on the call rather than sold something larger.
Where price-shopping tends to go wrong is the year something is different. A missed election, an S-corp with no reasonable compensation, or a rental basis that was never tracked can cost multiples of the fee that was saved, and it usually surfaces years later when it is harder to fix.
Get a real number for your situation.
Twenty minutes, no charge, no obligation. You will leave the call knowing what the work involves and what it would cost.