Pricing Your Tax Preparation Services

Many tax preparers don't charge enough for their services. A tax return preparer has two things to sell: time and value.

Pricing Your Time

Time is extremely limited. There are only about eight hours in an honest working day, and part of those hours are spent doing mundane office administration that you can't charge anyone for. So you're lucky if you can bill six hours out of eight.

When you quote hourly rates to most people, the first thing they'll do is compare your rate to what they earn on their job. If they earn $25 per hour and you quote a rate of $175 per hour, it can be sticker shock for most folks. It's often better to quote a fixed fee up front, so there are no surprises.

Value Billing

Value, on the other hand, can be priced much higher than time. Let's say you have an hour-long meeting with a client, and after looking over their information and interviewing them, you discover a way to save them $3,500 in taxes each year over the next 5 years. That's a total savings of $17,500. How much are you going to charge them for that?

Click here for some ideas on how much to charge for your tax return preparation services.