Tax-season surge capacity, audit production, CAS delivery, year-round bookkeeping – staffed with dedicated offshore accountants who work under your firm's brand, engagement letters, and software. Double your capacity without a single US hire.
What CPA firms hire us for
Dedicated offshore tax preparers from November through April. Returns 1040, 1065, 1120, 1120-S, 990. UltraTax, Lacerte, Drake, CCH Axcess, ProSystem fx, ProConnect. A senior preparer produces 200–300 returns per season at $2,400–$3,800/month – roughly one-third the fully-loaded cost of an equivalent US preparer.
Offshore audit staff and seniors prepare workpapers, PBC responses, tie-outs, substantive testing, and draft financials in Caseware, CCH Engagement, or Suralink. Your engagement team owns judgment and sign-off. Typical engagement: 60–70% of hours shift offshore, 30–40% stays with your licensed US team.
Full-stack bookkeeping, AP/AR, payroll, and close for your CAS clients – delivered under your firm's brand, your engagement letters, your software logins. Clients never know the work is offshore. Margins on a CAS practice typically jump from 15–20% to 45–55% with offshore production.
Offshore bookkeepers for firms that want to keep their CAS practice running through the summer without tax-season staff sitting idle. Also works for firms that want to add advisory services without bookkeeping pulling partner time away from strategy work.
The pitch most offshore vendors lead with – "save 60% on labor!" – gets the economics roughly right but misses why firms actually buy. The binding constraint in most CPA firms isn't cost; it's the inability to hire. The US accounting talent pipeline has been shrinking for a decade. New CPA exam sitters dropped 30% between 2016 and 2022. Entry-level accounting major enrollment is at 30-year lows. Firms that could pay $85k for a staff accountant simply can't find one to hire.
Offshore accounting solves the supply problem first and the cost problem second. A firm that adds two offshore tax preparers for busy season isn't saving money – it's doing work that wouldn't have been done at all, or would have been turned away. The savings are real but secondary to the capacity unlock.
Take a typical small-to-midsize firm doing 400 tax returns per season at a $425 average fee (AGI $170k gross revenue). Direct labor cost to produce those returns with US staff alone: roughly $95k loaded. Same volume with one senior offshore preparer handling 250 returns and US seniors handling 150: labor cost drops to $54k. That's $41k of additional gross margin on the same top line, or the ability to take on 200 more returns at the same cost. Firms typically choose the second – expanding rather than pocketing.
Every firm offshoring tax preparation has to obtain written consent from each client before tax return information is disclosed to a preparer located outside the United States. This is governed by IRS §7216 and Treasury Regulation §301.7216-3(a)(3)(i)(B). The consent has a specific required format: 18-point type, particular paragraph language, taxpayer signature. Violations carry civil penalties up to $1,000 per return and potential criminal exposure. We provide template consent language during onboarding; most firms fold it into their engagement letters.
Separately from §7216, AICPA Code of Professional Conduct §1.150.040 requires CPA firms to disclose the use of third-party service providers to clients before confidential information is shared. This is an ethical obligation, not statutory, but state boards can discipline firms that skip it. Most firms handle this with a single sentence added to their engagement letters.
For firms running work under their own brand, our offshore staff log into your engagement platform under named users (often assigned an @yourfirm.com email via forwarding), operate under your engagement letters and deliverable templates, and never communicate directly with end clients. To your client, the work product is your firm's work product. Invoices, signed deliverables, and partner communication all flow through your firm's normal channels. We bill your firm; your firm bills the client. Most clients never know which portion of the work was staffed offshore.
For the specific service pages most relevant to CPA firms, see offshore tax preparation, offshore audit support, offshore bookkeeping, and client accounting (CAS). For the broader offshore accounting picture, see our homepage.
FAQ
Yes. White-label is the default for CPA firms. Offshore accountants work under named users with your firm's email forwarding, use your templates, and are indistinguishable from internal staff to the end client.
We provide compliant template language during onboarding. Most firms add the consent paragraph to their engagement letters – one-time update. Consent must be obtained before any tax data is shared with offshore preparers. The template is reviewed annually for regulatory changes.
For a dedicated preparer seat, 150 returns per season minimum (otherwise per-return or hourly pricing is more efficient). Most firms doing 250+ returns find the dedicated model cheapest. Firms doing under 150 returns typically start with per-return pricing.
Yes, when documented properly. AICPA standards permit use of third-party providers as long as the engagement partner maintains responsibility and reviews the work. We provide a peer-review-ready documentation package at engagement onboarding – training records, quality control documentation, and confidentiality agreements.
Ideal: sign in September, pilot 20 returns in December, hit January fully productive. Realistic minimum: 3-week onboarding, so late-November start to be meaningfully useful in January. Mid-season starts (February+) work but leave most of the value on the table.
Yes, and this is how many firms structure the relationship. The roles are different people (different skill sets), but they can sit under one engagement, one security setup, and one account manager on our side. Cross-utilization also means the same team is busy year-round – audit in Q1–Q2, tax in Q1 and Q3–Q4, bookkeeping always.
30-day fit guarantee. We replace the accountant at no charge and the process documentation built during week 2 travels with us, so the replacement ramps in days. First-month quality issues are most often a matching problem, not a capability problem.
Only if you tell them. Under §1.150.040 you're required to disclose the use of third-party providers before confidential info is shared, which is usually a line in the engagement letter. Beyond that disclosure, the day-to-day work is invisible to end clients – they interact with your firm's US-based contacts.
Related
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