Find and Hire a Local Tax Firm

Why Hire a Tax Firm for Your Business?

Maintaining a proper financial administration is a vital part of any business, small or large. Being compliant with all local, federal, and international tax compliance regulations is part of this administration process. Any failures or shortcomings in your tax compliance can have direct negative effects on your business performance. Therefore, most companies have at least one financial expert employed, who is part of a company's core team, and who deals with all tax aspects that come into play when running a business. There are many reasons why your business may need some extra help of a tax firm. Besides helping clients to prepare corporate income tax returns, VAT/GST/Sales Tax returns, and other types of compliance, a tax firm typically also provides compensations tax services, international tax services, tax accounting services, transfer pricing services, tax planning and tax structuring services, real estate tax services, tax auditing services, or representative services towards tax authorities.

Do You Need a Tax Firm for a Specific Expertise?

Our marketplace includes many different tax firms across a variety of expertise fields. Search for a tax firm that provides one of these tax services:

Tax Generalist | Full Service Firm | Agricultural Levies & Refunds | Banking & Finance Taxation | Capital Markets & Structured Finance Taxation | Capital Tax | Tax Compliance & Reporting Services | Corporate Taxation | Country Tax Advisory | Customs & Excise Tax | Energy & Natural Resources Taxation | European Tax Law | Export Measures | Human Capital & Taxation | Import Duties & Exemptions | Indirect Tax | International Tax Services | M&A and Joint Ventures Taxation | Nonprofit & Exempt Organizations | Private Equity & Funds Taxation | Real Estate Taxation | Stamp Duty & Transfer Tax | State & Local Tax | Sustainability & Climate Change Tax | Tax Accounting Services | Tax Controversy & Dispute Resolution | Tax Efficient Supply Chain Management | Tax Incentives | Tax Performance Advisory | Tax Planning | Tax Risk Management & Tax Control Framework | Tax Rulings & APAs | Tax Valuation Services | Taxation & E-commerce | Transfer Pricing | US Tax Law Services | US Taxation in International Group Structures | VAT / GST / Sales Tax | Withholding Taxes | Other Tax Services

How Much Should You Pay to a Tax Firm?

It is far from standard practice that a tax firm publishes its fees on its website. If the tax services involved relate to more standardized work like preparing income tax or indirect tax returns for small to medium-sized businesses, then a tax firm normally charges for the work done on the basis of fixed fees. How much you should pay to a tax firm depends amongst others on the reason why you need these tax services. Overall, determining the average costs involved in hiring a tax firm is very hard to assess as it depends on so many factors and circumstances. In some countries, tax firms also apply success fee type of arrangements depending on the type of tax services, but in most countries, these type of fee arrangements are not allowed by law. Normally, tax services are charged by the hour, but fixed fees arrangements are becoming standard practice as well. Factors that affect the hourly rate charged, or the fixed fee arrangement, include the region where the service provider is located, the experience level, the type of clients or markets served and last but not least what kind of services are being provided which can be a more standardized routine type of work or highly specialized work.

For example, a small tax firm located in India may charge around USD 10 per hour for outsourced low-value tax compliance services, while a Transfer Pricing partner from one of the Big Four firms in Europe can charge more than EUR 700 per hour, depending on the type of work.

Via our online marketplace, you can search for many different types tax firms and tax services, and fine tune on key factors like region, specialization, hourly rate, experience level and types of clients served. When you have found your ideal firm or candidate for the job to be done, you can directly get in touch via email or phone and start working, without any charges or interference from our platform. Find out how it works.

To get some more feeling about typical fees charged by a tax firm you can also check out Robert Walters Annual Salary Survey. This survey gives very detailed insights about permanent, interim and contract placements across most part of the professional services industry, including the tax industry, and differentiates on aspects like region, experience level, big firms or smaller ones and much more.

Not Sure Whether to Hire a Freelancer, Advisor or a Firm?

This is not a simple question to answer and depends on a lot of factors. First of all, it depends on your needs and the type of work to be done. Your available budget may play a role but should not be decisive because freelancers have a reputation to be relatively cheap while firms tend to be more expensive, but the same can apply vice versa. As for the quality of work, this fully depends on the freelancers and consultants/firms you hire. A freelancer may provide better quality work in half the time than a firm could do. But, again the same could be vice versa. Furthermore, each of these service providers come with their own pro's and con's.

A freelancer performs its work independently, selling work or services by the hour, day or job. Both parties involved have no intention to establish a long-term structural working relationship with each other. Often freelancer's worked as a consultant for firms in their field of expertise, and at some point, in their career, they decided to do the same as they did but then via the freelancing route.

A consultant or an advisor is a person who is paid to provide professional or expert advice in a particular field or specialty, who is employed by a firm whose business is to provide these services via its consultants.

Professional services firms exist in many different industries. They include accountants, lawyers, marketing professionals, consultants, and web developers among others. They can be any firm that offers customized, knowledge-based services to clients. When clients hire advisory firms, they generally do so because of that company's credibility and reputation.

It is common knowledge that a business is only as good as its people. So with that in mind, a good starting point is to try to find the best person for the job first, and this can be a freelancer, a particular employed consultant, or a firm that has specialized in the field you are looking for.

Finally, the good news is that you can search for all these types of tax experts on our platform (freelancers, consultants, and firms) and compare them on the criteria that are relevant for you. Find out how it works or what other knowledge assets our platform has to offer like Knowledge Sharing, Knowledge Sources, and Curated Content to stay up to date with the latest news and developments.

Independents in the Tax Industry

There is no strict definition of what an Independent is in the professional services industry, including the tax industry. In general, Independents are independent firms that are owner operated, they tend to work in their own country only and the bigger the standalone business is, the more different types of services provided. Boutique firm or agency is also a commonly used name for these type of entrepreneurial businesses. They tend to provide highly specialized niche services, but they may very well also directly compete with the major international firms in their industry. Strictly speaking, freelancers also qualify as Independents.

It happens very often that experienced senior professionals break away from the major players that hired them to set up their own independent firm and start a more entrepreneurial journey. Besides autonomy and more control, the ability to better define personal purpose is a typical driver to work for Independents or to start one yourself.

Due to their size, market power, and marketing budgets, larger international firms are usually easily found in the market. Small independent type of businesses do not have this luxury, and as such, they need to be more creative to find new work on a continuous basis. Using platforms like Consultants 500 is a perfect way to create extra opportunities because our primary focus and purpose are to help clients find independents in the professional services industry, including independents in the tax industry.

Tax Advisory Industry

Professional Service Firms are organizations that exist primarily of professionals who provide advice to business. They include all sorts of businesses, like tax firms, accounting firms, law firms, management consulting firms, web development firms, and much more, most of which are listed on our platform.

Compared to most organizations, professionals service firms, including tax firms, lack hierarchy, are decentralized and have diffuse authority structures. They are knowledge intensive, and their primary currency is intellectual capital and expertise.

A services-dominated economy is characteristic of developed countries, while in less developed countries primary activities such as manufacturing, mining, and agriculture provide for most employment. According to Britannica, the services industry account for more than three-fifths of the global GDP and employs more than one-third of the global labor force. Therefore, Professional Service Firms now rival their Fortune 500 counterparts in nearly all measures of size and some of these firms, in all sectors, including the tax advisory industry, have become truly global players.

According to a November 2016 research from The Business Research Company, the global professional services sector in 2015 amounted to USD 3,750 billion. The Americas are the largest market and account for USD 1,500 billion or 40% of the global professional services sector, Europe is the 2nd largest market accounting for about 1,300 billion or 35% of the global market. Asia is the 3rd largest market, accounting for USD 750 billion or 20% of the global sector. The Middle East  & Africa account for 4% while Oceania accounts for 3.5% of the global professional services market. The tax sector is an important and profitable industry that is part of the global professional services market.

Tax specialists and tax advisors typically work in the following sectors:

• Accounting Firms - A significant portion of tax consultants work for large or smaller accounting firms. The four largest accounting firms, also known as the "Big Four" and some other large international partnerships that provide tax services have many offices across the world. In additional to the Big Four and the larger international firms there are millions of other accounting firms ranging from small firms to bigger local firms with multiple offices in one country that provide tax services. The difference between the Big Four and the smaller local firms is mainly size in revenues and number of professionals employed. In general, tax advisory is one of the primary service products of accounting companies. The tax services provided by these firms range from tax advisory services, tax compliance services to highly specialized tax services like tax valuation services or tax incentive services.
• Law Firms - The global legal services industry is massive and generated more than USD 645 billion in revenues during 2016. The US is the largest legal market and accounts for USD 290 billion or 45% of the global legal market. The UK is the 2nd largest market accounting for USD 45 billion or 7% of the global market. After that comes the German legal market accounting for USD 25 billion (7%), the French legal market accounting for USD 20 billion (3.5%), and then the Japanese legal market (0.5%). A substantial portion of tax services is provided by tax advisors that work for law firms where tax advisory can also be one of the firm's core activities. The tax advisory services provided by tax lawyers is to a large extent comparable to the tax services provided by accounting firms, but law firms tend to provide less tax compliance related services and these firms and their tax lawyers focus more on the legal technicalities from a tax law perspective.
• 100% Tax Advisory Firms - Some firms have fully specialized in providing tax advisory services to their clients. A large portion of these type of firms provides a broad range of tax advisory services comparable to the tax services provided by the accounting and law firms. On the other hand, some of these firms have fully specialized in one type of tax service like indirect tax services, tax compliance services, tax valuation services or real estate taxation services.
• Freelance Tax Consultant - Another portion of the overall tax advisory services are performed by tax experts who carry out their jobs as freelance tax specialists. These freelancers are typically hired as an in-house tax specialist by companies for a period to provide all sorts of tax services. These freelance tax consultants may partly take over the work that is usually done by the tax advisors of the accounting or law firms. However, it is also widespread that these freelance tax experts operate as the link between the business that hired them and the tax advisory firm enabling the tax advisory firm to focus more on highly specialized tax advisory services at a more senior level.
• In-house Tax Advisor - Tax experts also work for private or public companies performing most or part of the work that was traditionally done by external tax advisors. A company may have only one tax director, or it may have a large tax staff made up of the tax director, a tax manager and lesser experienced tax specialists. Generally, the larger the company, the bigger it's tax team

As a result of globalization, business developments, continuous changes in tax regulations and many other factors, the tax industry is in a constant state of flux. Tax advisory firms now compete with non-tax advisory service providers and some tax services are offshored to foreign countries.

The way the professional services industry works, including the tax advisory industry, has changed dramatically during the past few decades. Technology developments enabled working with massive amounts of data, work remotely, and deal with clients and colleagues at any place at any time. These technology changes are expected to continue at a fast pace in the future, and some experts predict that the traditional professional services industry will likely be radically different in ten years. We have further outlined the main causes and the main sectors impacted by ongoing disruption in our analysis: The Future of the Professional Services Industry.

Looking for a Local Tax Firm?

The global professional services industry is good for more than USD 3,750 billion revenues on an annual basis. The tax services industry is a significant sector of the global professional services industry. As such, it is not hard to imagine that there are literally millions of tax advisory firms and professionals who provide tax services to individuals, small businesses, or the worlds leading corporations, each of them having their own specialization. These tax experts can either work as a freelancer, or they can be seasoned professionals who work for small or large professional services firms that provide tax services. As said earlier, via our platform you can search for local tax firms in any location, fine-tune on criteria like specialization, hourly rate, and what type of clients they typically serve. And if you are looking for a particular tax expertise you can just fine tune your search criteria.

Discover the Latest News, Developments, Resources, and Community Knowledge in Tax

Knowledge is a fundamental cornerstone of our society. Without the ability of knowledge being gathered, shared and passed on to the next generation our world would look entirely different today, and we would be re-inventing the wheel again and again. Throughout human history, the capacity to gather and analyze information has existed and has been a key driver for further evolvement.

As a result of rapid technological developments in the last decades, and much more to come, knowledge and information have been put in another perspective. There has been a vast increase in data creation, and the way knowledge is obtained and shared in society has totally changed.

Still, the primary currency of a tax expert and all other professionals in the Professional Services Industry is knowledge. Staying up to date with the latest tax developments is also key for businesses in need for a tax firm. As we all know, the internet is an invaluable resource for knowledge these days. The only problem is that there are tons of sources for learning and staying up to date with the latest developments.

Via these knowledge sources on our platform you can learn more and stay up to date with the most recent tax developments:

• Knowledge Sharing - Via our Tax Community Forum all visitors can raise and answer questions about any tax subject you can think of. Here you can sort and follow tax posts to stay informed with the latest updates. Via up-voting and down-voting, the most relevant answers are highlighted. All our Business Services categories have their own Community Forum.
• Knowledge Sources - As said earlier, the internet is loaded with valuable information, the only problem is how to find it. Via Tax Knowledge Sources, the best tax sources on the web are organized in a structured way. Think of best blogs, the biggest firms, industry overviews, salary surveys, infographics, handy tools and much more, all related to t Via the ability to make comments and online surveys on each subject, our users and visitors can share their best sources. Because we update all Knowledge Sources categories on a regular basis with the best sources shared by our users and visitors, the knowledge-power continually improves and keeps up to date with the latest developments.
• Latest News & Developments - Via our Tax Briefing Room you can stay up to date with the latest and most shared content of the best tax resources on the internet. This Briefing Room follows the top tax resources on the web, which includes the best sources as suggested by our users and visitors. Only the most shared content is shown, and you can filter all the content for the last 24 hours, 3 days, 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, etc. so you can easily find and stay up to date with the latest tax news. All our Business Services categories have their own Briefing Room so you can stay up to date on any subject you want without seeing publications that are not relevant to you.

On our Blog, you can read about a wide area of subjects that are relevant for the Business Services covered by our platform, like Checklists, Best of Lists and many more topics. In our article The Future of the Professional Services Industry you can read more about the current age of disruption, the role of technology, the main sectors impacted and the main causes and disruptors.

Other Relevant Resources

• Tax Global: Tax Services | Freelance Tax Consultant | Tax Consultant | Tax Firm
• Tax Country: US Tax Services
• Tax City:
• Accounting Global: Accounting Services