Price_Hike
If you've been putting off a fee increase because you're worried it'll be the thing that finally pushes a client to shop around, you're not imagining the risk. After several years of steady price increases across nearly every service they buy, clients have grown wary of the next hike. A recent Harvard Business Review analysis on pricing strategy made exactly this point: customers are tired, and simply raising the sticker price further risks losing them to whatever they see as the “good enough” alternative.
For tax firm owners, that's a real bind. Costs are up. Staff compensation is up. The work has gotten more complex. You need to raise fees. But blanket percentage increases, the “everyone goes up 5% this year” approach, are exactly the move most likely to trigger client pushback right now.
The fix isn't to freeze prices. It's to change how you raise them.
Think about what you're actually competing against
The core idea from that pricing research is simple: clients don't evaluate your price in a vacuum; they compare it to their best alternative. That might be a competitor, or might be doing nothing (skipping advisory work, using software themselves, going to a cheaper preparer). If you raise your price without changing what the client sees, you've made their “best alternative” look more attractive by comparison. If you raise your price while making the value more obvious, you haven't.
Four ways to apply this in your practice
- Stop raising the whole invoice — raise the value first. Instead of increasing every client's fee by a flat percentage, look at where your firm delivers the most differentiated value (tax planning, multi-entity strategy, IRS notice response) and price that work explicitly, separate from routine compliance. Clients push back less on a new line item that clearly buys something new than on a bigger number for the same service.
- Bundle and tier instead of blanket-increasing. Offer a base compliance tier and a planning-and-advisory tier. Clients who only want the return filed can stay in the lower tier at a modest increase; clients who want proactive planning opt into the higher tier where your real margin lives. This lets price-sensitive clients self-select instead of you deciding for them.
- Lead the fee conversation with the alternative, not the number. Before you mention a new price, remind the client what they get that a cheaper option doesn't: a person who knows their business, catches issues before the IRS does, and is reachable in October. Anchor the conversation in what they'd lose, not just what they'd pay.
- Give long-standing clients a reason, not just a number. A short note such as “here's what changed in our scope of work this year” does more to make an increase land than silence followed by a higher invoice.
The conversation script
When you deliver the increase, keep it short: “Here's what's changing in the work we're doing for you this year, and here's the updated fee.” Value first, number second. Clients who understand what they're buying rarely leave over price. Clients who only see a bigger number almost always ask why.
Price fatigue is real, but it's not a reason to stay underpriced. It's a signal to make your value impossible to miss before you make your fee impossible to ignore.
Dr. Christine Gervais is a licensed CPA, using her skills to help businesses grow and achieve their fullest potential. Christine has a Master’s degree in accounting from Southern New Hampshire University in addition to holding her CPA license for over a decade. Notably, Christine is a nationally recognized speaker providing education to other CPAs on how to best serve clients as well as instruction on a wide variety of topics for business owners on how to maximize success. Christine prides herself on the value she can bring to clients with her extensive tax knowledge and provides strategic, forward-thinking financial strategies to help clients grow. When not behind her desk, you can find Christine spending quality time with her daughter and stepson or tending to the family’s excessively loved farm animals.
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