CPA Hourly Rates: What Surveys Show, and Why Most Published Ranges Have No Source

Any CPA hourly rate you find quoted online should be read with one fact in front of it: there is no current, public survey of what CPAs bill by seniority, firm size or specialty. The most complete figures are the National Society of Accountants Income and Fees survey, conducted in 2020 and covering 2019 and 2020, which put the average hourly fee for federal and state tax returns at $179.71 and for bookkeeping advisory at $108.61, and Intuit’s rate survey conducted in November 2021, which reported an average of $126 an hour for CPAs. The AICPA’s own practice management survey, a benchmarking study of more than a thousand US firms, publishes no billing rates publicly at all.

The short version: two old surveys are the whole evidence base, the market you are in moves the number more than the credential does, and the rate matters less than what the firm estimates the work will take.

What a CPA hourly rate actually is

A billing rate is a firm’s price for an hour of a person’s time. It has to cover that person’s salary, the employer’s share of payroll taxes, benefits, the hours they spend on continuing education, administration, training and work that never gets billed, plus rent, software, insurance, professional liability cover and the firm’s profit. It is set by the firm, varies by who does the work, and in many practices varies by the type of work as well.

That last point is why a single number for “the CPA rate” does not exist even inside one firm. A practice that bills hourly usually carries several rates, because the partner who signs a return and the person who prepares it do not cost the firm the same.

The hourly figures that have a survey behind them

The National Society of Accountants asked its members what they charge per hour by type of work. These are national averages from a survey conducted in 2020, reported alongside the same question from earlier editions, which is the only way to see the direction of travel.

Source: National Society of Accountants Income and Fees Survey, fielded in 2020 covering 2019 and 2020 data. Every figure is a mean.

Three caveats travel with that table. It is six years old. The survey drew 1,009 usable responses from 5,372 invitations, an 18.8 percent response rate, and its respondents are members of a society whose base is small and mid-sized practices, so it does not describe national firms. And the survey’s own note on its rate tables is that fees vary sharply state by state.

The other survey worth citing is Intuit’s, conducted in November 2021 and published in March 2022. It reported averages of $126 an hour for CPAs, $112 for tax accountants and $66 for bookkeepers and certified bookkeepers, and found that QuickBooks Online-certified professionals averaged $82 an hour against $68 for those without the certification. It remains the latest edition Intuit has made public.

Notice that the two surveys disagree by a wide margin on a similar question. The National Society of Accountants asked what firms charge for a type of work; Intuit asked professionals what they charge. Neither is wrong, and the gap is a fair measure of how much confidence any single figure deserves.

Why most published ranges have no source

Search this question and the same tidy range comes back across many accounting firm blogs, usually with no citation at all. Here is what the obvious sources actually publish.

The AICPA National MAP Survey, released on September 10, 2025 with 1,073 firms completing it and 81 percent of responses coming from firms with revenue of $5 million and below, is the AICPA’s benchmarking study of US public accounting practices. Its public release reports a median 6.7 percent increase in total net client fees and a median starting salary of $60,834 for a bachelor’s degree hire. It publishes no hourly billing rates publicly. What it does note is a slow but steady increase in value and fixed pricing, offset by a decline in traditional hourly-based billing, which is itself a reason the data is thin: firms are moving away from the thing everyone wants surveyed.

The National Association of Tax Professionals ran a fee study in 2025, and its per-form and per-service tables are available to members only. Its public summary states that 83 percent of tax professionals raise fees every one to two years, typically by 6 to 10 percent, and that nearly half set a minimum fee and then adjust the price for complexity or the value provided.

The National Society of Accountants table above is the most detailed public source, and it stopped at 2020. Intuit’s survey stopped at 2021.

The Ignition 2025/2026 U.S. Accounting and Tax Pricing Benchmark, a survey of 219 of its own US accounting-firm customers fielded in July 2025, is the newest fee survey in this market and it publishes no hourly rates at all. It prices work by fee band rather than by the hour, and its questions about pricing models show how uncommon hourly billing has become among its respondents: 2.7% billed tax preparation by the hour, 16.9% tax planning and advisory, 3.7% monthly bookkeeping and 9.6% CFO and controller work. Those 219 firms are one software vendor’s own customers rather than a representative sample, so read the shares as a description of that group.

So the honest position is that a current rate range for CPAs does not exist in any public dataset. A published range without a named survey and year behind it is someone’s impression, and it may be a fair one, but it is not data and this page will not add another one to the pile.

What accountants are paid, and why that is not a billing rate

The Bureau of Labor Statistics does publish current, reliable numbers, and they are wage numbers. A wage is what an employee is paid. A billing rate is what a client is charged. The difference is everything the firm has to cover between the two.

The mechanism between a $40.23 wage and whatever the firm charges is not mysterious, and it is not a markup for its own sake. An employer pays payroll taxes and benefits on top of salary. Only part of an employee’s paid year is billable: continuing education is mandatory for a licensed CPA, and firm time also goes on administration, supervision, recruiting, client development and work that is written off rather than invoiced. Everything the firm buys, from office space to tax software to professional liability insurance, is recovered through the hours it does bill. Whatever is left is profit. No published survey gives a reliable multiplier between the two figures, so this page does not offer one.

There is one sourced illustration of the size of the gap, and it is in bookkeeping rather than tax. The BLS median wage for bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks was $24.36 an hour in May 2025. The National Society of Accountants survey found firms billing QuickBooks and bookkeeping advisory work at an average of $108.61 an hour in 2020. Different years, different sources, and the same point: the rate a firm charges for a category of work is a different order of number from the wage of the person doing it.

One more caution on the BLS figures. The bureau surveys the occupation “accountants and auditors”, not the CPA credential. It counted 1,595,200 people in that occupation in its handbook, which includes the self-employed, and 1,449,500 in the OEWS survey, which does not. NASBA counted 650,667 actively licensed CPAs as of August 27, 2026, drawing on 53 of the 55 licensing jurisdictions. Most accountants are not CPAs, so the median accountant’s wage is not the median CPA’s wage, and neither is a billing rate.

What actually moves the number

The same survey asked about the hourly fee for one specific job, a Form 1040 with itemized deductions and a state return, and cut it by the characteristics of the firm and its market. This is the best available evidence on why two quotes for the same work can differ so widely.

Source: National Society of Accountants Income and Fees Survey, 2019-2020 data, Form 1040 with Schedule A and a state return.

Read down that table and the ranking is clear. Who your firm’s clients are moves the rate most: the practices serving the wealthiest client base charged more than double those serving the least wealthy. Where the firm is comes next, with a large city about 37 percent above a rural practice. How the firm is organized matters too, with professional corporations charging well above sole proprietors, which is partly a proxy for firm size.

Two other drivers have some support. Specialty, from the service table above: the survey’s respondents averaged $108.61 an hour for bookkeeping advisory and $201.16 for offers in compromise, so the type of work nearly doubles the rate. And credential, from Intuit’s 2021 survey, where CPAs averaged $126 an hour against $112 for tax accountants and $66 for bookkeepers, and a QuickBooks Online certification was associated with $82 an hour against $68 without it.

What no source supports is a rate by years of experience, by partner against staff, or by the size categories firms use for themselves. Those cuts are simply not published.

Hourly or fixed fee, and what to ask for

For most small business work, the hourly rate is the wrong thing to negotiate. A lower rate on more hours costs more, and the firm knows how long the job takes while you do not. The AICPA’s 2025 survey describes firms moving toward fixed and value pricing for exactly that reason, and the National Association of Tax Professionals reports that nearly half of preparers set a minimum fee and then price on complexity.

So ask about the engagement, not the rate:

• Is this quoted hourly or as a fixed fee, and if hourly, what is your estimate of the hours, and will you tell me before you exceed it?
• Which people will work on this, and what rate does each one carry?
• What is the billing increment, and is the first meeting billed?
• What is the minimum fee for this type of work?
• What would make the final bill higher than the estimate?

The last question has a known answer worth pre-empting. Disorganized and incomplete records are the extra that catches most people out, charged by 78 percent of the firms in the survey, and the fee structure around them is set out in how much a CPA costs, along with the per-form averages for tax preparation.

For ongoing work, ask whether the firm will quote a monthly fee instead. A fixed monthly price makes the cost predictable and removes the disincentive to pick up the phone, which is the practical cost of an hourly arrangement that nobody prices in.

How to find the right one

Check the license before the rate. A CPA license is granted by a state board of accountancy, and the board’s register is the authoritative check; NASBA’s licensee database aggregates most jurisdictions into one search. For anyone preparing returns for a fee, the IRS publishes a searchable directory of preparers holding a recognized credential or an Annual Filing Season Program record of completion. Then ask two or three firms for a written estimate of the whole job rather than a rate, and compare those. Our directory lists practices by state and city, with a verification seal for those whose credentials match IRS records, and if the work you need is forecasting, margin analysis and management reporting rather than compliance, fractional CFO engagements are priced by scope rather than by the hour.

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