How to Price Complex Tax Planning Work

Tax planning is a big opportunity to add significant value to our clients. Unfortunately, we often price it completely wrong and miss out on premium fees.

In my latest YouTube video (from a Live Webinar) I teach you strategies for getting bigger fees from tax planning. In this blog post, I’ll give you a snippet of the key principles from that video, but you can watch the whole video here: https://youtu.be/-3J-yiIjn08

The Key Principles

Never price tax planning work by the hour

We should absolutely NOT be pricing tax planning work based on how long the work takes, because that's completely irrelevant!

No client is ever interested in how many hours we spend doing something. The only thing that clients are interested in is the end result that we can get for them.

And the great thing about tax planning work is that we can get big results for clients.

Fully communicate the value and benefits of the tax planning

You need to think very carefully about the language you use to communicate the value of the service you are providing. We want to really build up the value in the client’s mind.

Use precise numbers and figures to make your tax planning benefits more real to the client.

If the process is going to be difficult or uncertain, tell them that! Because as soon as we say, “Oh, this will be really simple,” to underplay the risk, we devalue the work we are doing and so we can’t charge a suitable price.

Even if something seems simple to do, it’s probably something the client has been panicking about, so don’t devalue your work!

Set a price based on value (not hours)

Clients HATE surprise bills. They want to know upfront what the price will be, rather than deal with uncertain hourly billing.

We especially can’t price based on hours when we have no idea how much work will be involved.

When considering the value, think about things like:

• The amount of money involved
• The level of risk
• How unique you are – could anyone else do this work?

Build in a guarantee

One of the things the client worries most about when making a buying decision is the risk that what we buy doesn’t deliver what we expected. And the greater this risk for the customer, the harder it is for them to buy.

Guarantee your client that if you can’t get them the result you’d hoped for, the price will reflect that.

Remember, this is just a very brief snippet of what I teach you in the video. Check out the full video here: https://youtu.be/-3J-yiIjn08

If you found this valuable and would like to learn more about value pricing, I run a free live online training session every month with a topic chosen by you. Attend live and you can ask me any questions you have. Click here to register and I will send you an invitation to the next session.

Wishing you every success on your pricing journey

Mark Wickersham

Chartered Accountant, Public Speaker and Author of Amazon No.1 Best Seller “Effective Pricing for Accountants”