What Is The Cost Fee For Income Tax Preparation With Liberty Tax Services

Tax professionals employ a variety of different methods to set prices, including per-item, per-form, or per-hour rates. For example, a practitioner might accuse any of the following:

A prepare fee for each tax form or schedule.
A minimum fee plus an corporeality based on the complexity of the client's return.
A fee based on the subjective value of the tax preparation service.
An hourly rate for fourth dimension spent preparing the tax render.
A set fee for each detail of data.

Whether you apply one of these methods, a combination of methods or some other approach to setting your fees, information technology's a good idea to comport an annual review in accelerate of tax return season to ensure that you are non shortchanging yourself. Your fee structure should gene in your cost, plus a reasonable profit margin. On the other hand, you'll desire to make sure you are not charging more than the market volition bear.

While not definitive, comparative data on what other tax professionals are charging tin can be a useful guideline for assessing your fee structure. For example, the 2020-2021 Income and Fees Survey from the National Club of Accountants (NSA) provides some insight into the fees charged by revenue enhancement professionals for various tax preparation services.

Tax preparation fees national averages

The NSA study reports the post-obit national averages for Class 1040 income tax returns and a corresponding state return:

$220 for Form 1040 without itemized deductions.
$323 for an itemized Form 1040 with Schedule A.
$903 for Form 1120S – South corporation

Does geography bear on how much preparers charge?

The location of your tax practice will have a bearing on the fees you can charge. For case, the NSA report found pregnant regional differences in the average fee for a Form 1040 with Schedule A and a state render — as well as variations inside each region — with the highest fees reported on the east and westward coasts. See the Income and Fees Survey for details.

How should tax preparers handle delinquent or disorganized clients?

It is non uncommon for preparers to charge a college fee to clients who submit their return paperwork at the eleventh hour or who submit a jumbled mess. The NSA study institute that 75.1 pct of preparers increase their fees past an average of $145.14 for disorganized or incomplete paperwork to consummate a return for a sole proprietor. See the Income and Fees Survey for details.

2021 Intuit Rate Survey

The 2021 Intuit® Rate Survey results are in! If you lot were ane of the nigh 900 accounting and bookkeeping professionals who participated in the survey, yous have our deepest gratitude!

Nosotros are excited to share the initial results with you. Over the next few weeks, we will exist sharing the insights nosotros learned in a series of manufactures that will be published on Firm of the Future. Every bit in past years, the 2021 survey asked a diverseness of questions related to firm demographics, methods used to pecker clients for different types of services, and of form, how much practitioners are charging for these services. This twelvemonth we also asked specific questions regarding COVID-19 and its impact on your house's gross profit margins and average fixed prices, while likewise touching on how our clients were affected.

How do taxation preparers collect fees?

The survey asked practitioners how they billed their clients for various service offerings based on the post-obit definitions:

Hourly billing based on the hours worked.
Value pricing based on the maximum amount a given client is willing to pay for a service, typically fix before the piece of work begins.
Value billing is usually marking up—or more oft marker down—the invoice to the client subsequently the piece of work has been performed.
Fixed fees, with the fee often determined based on estimated hours (or cost) to consummate the work.

Intuit Survey average hourly rates

It is of import to note that simply 48% of survey respondents were willing to provide their average hourly rate. Based on the data available, however, it appears equally though we gave ourselves a enhance since the last survey was done in 2019. The standard boilerplate hourly rates increased past 8.6% from $69 (2019) to $75 (2021).

Survey data as well indicates that more than practitioners in 2021 (35%) are charging the aforementioned hourly rate across the board for all services. This could propose an effort to streamline billing rates or that services are existence bundled.

We also looked at the average hourly billing rates for QuickBooks-related services by both professional designation and ProAdvisor certification status.

Editor'south annotation: This article was updated with new content on Dec. 7, 2020, and updated with new content on Jan. 27, 2022.

The Intuit® Accountants squad provides ProConnect™ Tax, Lacerte® Revenue enhancement, ProSeries® Tax, and add-on software and services to enable workflow for its customers. Visit us at https://proconnect.intuit.com, or follow us on Twitter @IntuitAccts.