The return is a commodity. The judgment is not.

I spent seven years in financial services before I spent two years preparing returns. In my first season I kept seeing the same thing: a decision that had already cost the client money, visible in the prior year's return. A sale booked in the wrong year. A retirement plan never opened. An entity that no longer fit.

The return is the most complete financial document a family has. Every source of income, every entity, every dollar paid to the government, reconciled and signed. In most practices it is used for one thing: filing.

This is the first article in The Practice, a series for owners of tax and accounting firms about where our profession is going and what it takes to go with it.

The return is being repriced

Compliance work is skilled work. What is being repriced is the model built around it: one return, one fee, once a year, delivered after every number in it is final. Three numbers tell the story.

• Capital is buying the relationships. Private equity closed 178 deals in the accounting profession in 2025 (CPA Trendlines, Jun 2026). Nobody pays those prices for returns. They pay for the clients, and for what can be offered to them next.
• Software is shrinking the hours. One firm reported 1040 engagements falling from sixteen hours to five or six as preparation tools assemble the return from source documents (Thomson Reuters, Nov 2025).
• Clients want planning and are not getting it. In one survey, 90 percent of investors wanted tax planning, the widest gap between demand and supply of any service measured (Herbers & Co, Oct 2023).

Put together: the hours behind a return are falling, and the value has moved to what is done with it. The firm that prepares the return holds the best seat at the table, and in most cases it is the one seat nobody is using.

Three paths for your firm

1. Compete on the return. Automate, grow volume and hold the line on price. It can work, but you compete with software companies and firms backed by private equity, on their terms, and the price of the return moves in one direction.
2. Build advisory in house. Use the return you already prepare as the start of planning, price the planning on its own, and learn to hear the wealth questions inside a tax file, with the compliance guardrails in place. It is harder than it sounds. This series walks through it.
3. Partner for it. Keep the return and the relationship, and bring in a firm that has built the planning and wealth side, on terms that pay you for the value your client receives.

What I would not do is wait. The firms that move now set the terms: which clients they keep, what they charge, and who wants to work for them.

What comes next

Every other Tuesday through January, The Practice takes one part of the move and shows how it is done, starting with where your next ten advisory clients already are: your filing cabinet. In the weeks between, Strategy Review takes one tax strategy at a time and runs the numbers.

If you would rather partner than build. Trinity works with referring firms. You keep the return and the relationship. We run the Tax Position Analysis and the planning, and report back to you. Professionals registered to solicit for an investment adviser can also enter a written solicitor agreement with the separately licensed advisory firm. Terms, including how referring firms are paid, are shared in writing after a first call. Start with a conversation.

I am also writing a book on this move, The Next Gen Firm. Join the list and you will get the PDF free when it is ready.

Ryan Munoz, EA, is the founder of Trinity Tax Strategies.

Trinity Tax Strategies, LLC does not provide investment advice and does not sell securities or insurance. Ryan Munoz is also a licensed financial advisor with a separately registered investment adviser, and that firm and Trinity are affiliated through him. Advisory and insurance services are provided by separately licensed firms and professionals under their own agreements. This article is general information, not tax, legal or investment advice.