MARK KOHLERMain Street Professionals, Main Street Professionals, Main Street Professionals, Main Street Professionals, Main Street Professionals, LLC · Owner at Main Street Professionals, LLC

How to Price Tax Advisory Services

8 Mar 2026 · 1 min

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1:01

In this solo presentation, Mark Kohler explains practical approaches to pricing tax advisory services. He advocates a monthly fee model that bundles services such as tax preparation, bookkeeping, payroll, and outsourced CFO work, dividing the total annual cost into twelve equal payments. Recognizing that client needs often change, he stresses the need for a dynamic pricing structure and engagement letters that allow for scope adjustments and additional charges when a client’s situation becomes more complex. Kohler emphasizes transparent communication and proper client onboarding—setting clear expectations, using engagement letters, and establishing fair exchange—to protect both the firm and the client while making advisory pricing manageable and predictable.

Chapters

We've got to understand how to price advisory services. Now, advisory services are typically a monthly fee that's budgeted out for the client, which they love. And then it would include quarterly meetings, would include maybe tax prep, bookkeeping, payroll, outsourced CFO services, whatever you're putting together for the client. It's going to have a total and you would divide it by 12 months. And in a perfect world, they'd start May 1st and end April of next year. Tax returns would be all done and the client runs off into the sunset. Now, it's not always going to be that clean. So we have to have a dynamic pricing model. We have to have engagement letters that allow us to charge more when a client shows up with more stuff on our doorstep. I've been there, I know what you're going through. So I know it can sound overwhelming because pricing for advisory can seem like a moving target, but that's okay, embrace it. You adopt those concepts in your engagement letter and you communicate that with transparency to your client. So as we learn the strategies that we're gonna deliver through advisory services, we need to make sure we're onboarding the client with the right engagement letter, expectations, and pricing. It's doable and not overwhelming, and you can build in the protection for yourself and for your client so it ends up to be a fair exchange.