For CPA firm owners

You built the trust. Compliance pricing was never going to pay you for it.

Your clients hand you their complete financial picture every year and take your advice on it. The engagement is priced per return. MicroTax partners with and acquires tax practices to add the advisory layer that work already earns, without changing your brand, your team, or your client relationships.

Request a Confidential Conversation See What Changes

45 minutes. Mutual NDA before any detail about your practice is discussed.

The opportunity

The gap is not in your work. It is in what the work is allowed to be paid for.

A compliance engagement is scoped to report the past accurately. Advisory is scoped to change the future. The second is worth several times the first to the same client, and almost no practice is structured to deliver it.

22%
Typical EBITDA for a compliance-focused firm1
40%+
Target EBITDA once the advisory layer is live1
75%
Share of firm owners at or near retirement age2

Being straight about what this is

The advisory revenue comes from your existing clients, not from new ones. That is the whole thesis and it is also the thing you should push hardest on in the first conversation. Ask exactly which services, at what price, to which segment of your book, and what the realistic take-up rate has been. If the answers are vague, that tells you something.

Who this tends to fit

Growing into advisory

You have already started offering planning work and want the specialist bench, the technology, and the process behind it rather than building all three yourself.

At the compliance ceiling

The book is full, realization is as good as it will get, and the only paths left are raising rates on loyal clients or hiring staff you cannot find.

Two to ten years from exit

You want a succession path that does not mean handing your clients to a stranger in a single transaction, and you want to participate in the value you helped build.

What changes

Most of your firm stays exactly as it is

This is the first question every owner asks and it deserves a direct answer before anything else.

Stays the same
  • Your brand and your name on the door, the letterhead, and the engagement letters.
  • Your client relationships. You remain the relationship owner. Nothing is reassigned.
  • Your team. No reduction as a condition of partnership. Staff keep their roles and their titles.
  • Your compliance workflows. Your software, your review process, your busy season.
  • Your timeline. If you plan to work another eight years, that is the plan.
Gets added
  • An advisory service layer your clients can access, delivered with a specialist bench behind it.
  • Revenue share on advisory work, on defined terms, on top of your existing compliance revenue.
  • Platform infrastructure: the opportunity analysis, the strategy library, the delivery process.
  • A licensed network for the work your practice is not licensed to structure.
  • An acquisition and succession path when you want one, on a timeline you set.

The one thing that genuinely does change

Your clients will be offered services they are not offered today, and some of those services carry commissions or asset-based fees rather than hourly billing. You should understand that structure completely before you sign anything, and you should be comfortable defending it to a client who asks. See how everyone gets paid.

Who runs your integration

The question is not who founded the platform. It is who will be in your office.

Ron James

Ron James

COO & Co-Founder · leads firm integration

Ron runs integration for every practice that joins MicroTax. He is the person your staff will meet, the one who builds the plan for your book, and the one accountable if it goes wrong.

His background is operating at scale in exactly this business: the world's largest retailer, the largest consumer electronics retailer, and the largest tax preparation firm, where he led roughly 300 retail tax offices. He was later an SVP at a firm that recovered more than $6B in tax credits for small businesses.

That record is the reason to have the conversation. Plenty of platforms will tell you integration goes smoothly. Fewer can name the person who has done it at three hundred locations.

~300Retail tax offices led
$6B+Recovered by a firm he helped scale3
MBAOperating and finance background

Ron is available directly for a first conversation. You will not be routed to a business development representative.

The process

Five stages, and you can stop after any of them

Nothing about your practice is discussed before a mutual NDA is executed. Nothing is committed until stage three.

  1. Discovery and fit2 to 4 weeks

    A conversation about your book, your timeline, and what you want out of the next few years. Mutual NDA first. You do not need to bring financials.

  2. Opportunity analysis3 to 4 weeks

    We run your client base through the analysis and show you, segment by segment, what advisory revenue realistically exists inside it. You see the numbers before you commit to anything.

  3. Terms and integration1 to 2 months

    Structure agreed and documented. Platform, training and the advisory bench stand up alongside your existing workflows rather than on top of them. We work around busy season, never through it.

  4. Advisory activationMonths 2 to 12

    Advisory offered to your book in a defined sequence, starting with the segment where the value is clearest. Measured against the stage two projection, with results reviewed openly.

  5. Ownership and successionYear 2 onward

    If and when you want it: an acquisition or equity path, priced on a firm that is by then worth more than the one you started the conversation with. That sequencing is the point.

Why succession comes last

Selling a compliance practice at compliance multiples is the outcome available to you today. The argument for waiting is that a practice with a live advisory line, on higher margin and with recurring revenue, is valued differently. If the platform works, you sell a better firm. If it does not, you have not sold anything yet.

The questions owners actually ask

Answered plainly, in the order they usually come up

What happens to my staff?

No headcount reduction is a condition of partnership. Roles, titles, and reporting lines stay as they are. Your team gains access to advisory training and a specialist bench they can escalate to. Any change to compensation structure is agreed with you, not imposed.

What happens to my clients?

They stay your clients. You remain the relationship owner and you approve which clients are approached about advisory services and in what order. If you decide a client should never be offered anything beyond compliance, that decision stands.

How does everyone get paid?

Advisory work is a fee-based engagement with revenue shared on defined terms. Retirement and protection products carry commissions paid by the carrier. Investment coordination is billed as a percentage of assets under management. You will see the full economics, including what MicroTax earns on every service line, before you sign.

Replace this answer with the accurate structure. Vagueness here is what kills partnership conversations with sophisticated owners.

How do you value my practice?

Valuation is based on recurring revenue, client concentration, realization, staff continuity, and the advisory potential identified in stage two. We show you the method and the inputs rather than a multiple pulled from the air.

Insert the actual valuation framework and a worked example. An owner who sees the arithmetic trusts the number; an owner given only a multiple assumes he is being low-balled.

Do I have to sell?

No. Partnership and acquisition are separate decisions. Many firms run the advisory layer for years with no change in ownership. The succession path exists for owners who want it, on a timeline they choose.

What if it does not work?

Stage two gives you a projection before you commit, and stage four measures against it. Exit terms if the advisory line underperforms are documented in the agreement rather than left to good faith.

Confirm this is accurate before publishing. If there is no documented exit provision, say so plainly instead, and expect it to come up in every negotiation.

Who else has done this?

To be completed. A named reference, or a case study of the founding practice told with real numbers, is the single most valuable addition to this page. An owner will discount everything above until one peer confirms it.

Who you would be partnering with

The people behind the platform

Sunil Cherian
Sunil Cherian
CEO & Co-Founder

Entrepreneur and company builder. Sets firm strategy and leads growth.

LinkedIn ↗
Ron James
Ron James
COO & Co-Founder

Runs integration for every practice that joins. Spent a decade at H&R Block, most of it as a regional director across seven western states and over 300 locations. Later an SVP at a firm that recovered more than $6B in tax credits for small businesses.

LinkedIn ↗
Salil Jain
Salil Jain
Co-Founder

Twenty-five years building and scaling enterprise businesses. Go-to-market and customer operations leadership at DocuSign, SAP, MetricStream and Rackspace. MBA, University of Texas at Austin.

LinkedIn ↗
Harry Kemper
Harry Kemper
Co-Founder

Runs HB Kemper Enterprises. Builds the channel partnerships and firm network.

LinkedIn ↗

Reenu Cherian, Co-Founder, leads the client advisory practice. See the full team

Still to add before this page goes live

Named capital backing, or a plain statement of how acquisitions are funded. At least one completed integration told as a case study, even if it is the founding practice. A downloadable owner's brief behind a short form, which is how you build a pipeline of owners who are interested but not yet ready to talk.

Start with a conversation, not a term sheet

Forty-five minutes with Ron James about your practice, your timeline, and whether there is a fit. No preparation, no financials, no obligation.

Request a Confidential Conversation
Mutual NDA executed before any detail about your practice is discussed