High-Earning Tax & Accounting Practice, 44-Year King County WA Firm

$2.5M

Revenue

$1.2M

SDE

4.0x

Multiple

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Full Editorial Writeup

This is a 44-year-old tax and accounting practice in King County, Washington, serving roughly 1,560 active clients across a diversified service mix. The revenue split is well-balanced for a firm this size: 45% individual tax, 23% business tax, 10% bookkeeping and accounting, 7% fiduciary and estate tax, 6% audit, 6% consultations, and 3% compilation and review. That diversity matters because it reduces single-season concentration and creates natural cross-sell into recurring bookkeeping and advisory work.

The practice is doing about $2.49M in gross revenue with $1.24M in seller cash flow, a fat roughly 50% owner-earnings margin that is characteristic of a well-run accounting shop. Gross receipts grew from approximately $1.95M in 2025 to approximately $2.27M on a trailing-twelve-month basis through July 2026, about 16% growth, which is unusually strong for a four-decade-old firm and suggests the client base is still expanding rather than aging out.

The operation runs on 14 staff including the owner, five of whom are seasonal or part-time, out of a leased 2,500 square foot space at $7,000 per month. The owner is offering transition assistance, goodwill transfer, business development support, and mentoring, which is exactly what you want when the asset you are buying is client relationships and staff continuity. At $4.95M, the deal is priced at roughly 4.0x cash flow, a premium but defensible number for a growing, high-margin accounting book in an affluent Seattle-area county.

Why we like it

Earnings quality is strong and clean: $1.24M of cash flow on $2.49M of revenue is a 50% margin, and the EBITDA figure of $949K confirms real profitability even after normalizing owner comp. Accounting books rarely show this kind of spread, and the four-decade track record means the earnings are proven across multiple cycles, not a recent spike.
The moat is sticky client relationships across 1,560 active clients with a loyal, tenured base built over 44 years. Tax and bookkeeping clients carry high switching costs because the firm holds their history, filings, and trust, so annual renewals happen by default rather than by re-selling. That recurring, retainer-and-renewal pattern is the backbone of durable cash flow.
Market tailwinds are favorable because tax and accounting is the definition of non-discretionary spend. Individuals and businesses file every year in good times and bad, and compliance complexity only increases, which protects both volume and pricing. King County is an affluent, growing market with a dense base of business owners who need ongoing compliance and advisory work.
The operator advantage is real: 16% top-line growth on a 44-year-old firm shows the client acquisition engine still works and there is room to raise prices and deepen bookkeeping and advisory penetration. A buyer who adds modern marketing, packaged advisory offerings, and selective bolt-ons can compound a proven base rather than build from scratch.
Staff continuity de-risks the transition: 14 people including nine full-timers and five seasonal workers mean the production capacity does not walk out the door with the owner. Combined with an owner willing to mentor and transfer goodwill, the key-man risk inherent in professional practices is materially reduced.

How to improve it

Push recurring revenue mix higher by converting more of the 45% individual-tax and 23% business-tax clients into monthly bookkeeping and advisory retainers. The practice already does 10% bookkeeping, so the playbook exists; packaging a bundled monthly plan smooths cash flow out of the Q1 to Q2 tax crunch and raises per-client value.
Run a structured price increase in the first filing season after close. Long-tenured practices almost always underprice loyal clients, and a disciplined 8 to 12% increase on individual returns typically produces near-zero attrition while dropping straight to the bottom line given the fixed cost base.
Implement or upgrade a formal CRM and client-portal workflow to reduce seasonal chaos and seasonal labor dependence. Standardizing document intake and e-signatures lets the nine core staff handle more volume and lessens reliance on the five seasonal workers, improving margins during peak.
Build a referral and review-generation engine to institutionalize the word-of-mouth that drove 44 years of growth. Formalizing client referrals, local CPA cross-referrals, and online reviews turns an informal pipeline into a repeatable acquisition channel that a buyer controls.
Mine the existing book for underpenetrated services: estate and fiduciary work is only 7% and audit 6%, yet those are high-value engagements the current clients likely need. A targeted cross-sell campaign into the installed base of 1,560 clients grows revenue with zero new client acquisition cost.
Document the owner's relationships and institutional knowledge before the mentoring period ends. Capturing client histories, pricing logic, and key contacts in writing protects against the goodwill erosion that kills professional-practice acquisitions when the founder is the relationship.
Evaluate tuck-in acquisitions of smaller retiring-CPA books in King County to stack onto this fixed-cost platform. The 2,500 square foot office and existing staff can absorb incremental clients at high incremental margin, making bolt-ons an attractive compounding lever.

Diligence notes

Verify client retention and revenue persistence year over year, not just the 16% TTM growth headline. Pull client counts and billings by year to confirm the growth is net of attrition and understand whether it came from new clients, price increases, or one-time project work that may not repeat.
Scrutinize owner dependence and the share of revenue tied directly to the owner's personal relationships. Ask how many of the 1,560 clients deal exclusively with the owner versus staff, because that ratio determines transition risk and the real value of the mentoring period.
Confirm the normalization bridge between $1.24M cash flow and $949K EBITDA. Understand exactly what add-backs produce the SDE figure, whether staff are market-comp, and what a replacement for the owner's production and management role actually costs.
Review the staff situation closely: tenure, compensation, non-competes, and flight risk of the nine full-timers who carry production. In a professional practice the team is the asset, so losing senior preparers post-close could gut capacity during tax season.
Examine the service-line seasonality and working-capital swing given that tax is concentrated in the first half of the year. Map monthly cash flow and the lease commitment at $7,000 per month against the seasonal payroll to ensure financing is structured for the off-season troughs.
Confirm licensing and regulatory requirements, including whether a CPA credential is required to own or sign for the firm's audit and attest work. The 6% audit line in particular may demand a licensed principal, which affects who can buy and operate this practice.

Source

Originally listed on BizBuySell. View original listing →