Tax Preparation Services (United States) — NAICS 541213

An investor's primer for both public-market and private investors. Figures are reported facts with citations; statements about what may happen next are labeled as judgments. Core industry figures come from U.S. federal data; company and market figures are cited to their sources.

1. Overview

Every spring, tens of millions of Americans pay someone — or some software — to turn a shoebox of forms into a filed tax return. The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code 541213, "Tax Preparation Services," is the slice of that activity done by dedicated tax-prep firms: the storefront chains, the seasonal offices, and the standalone preparers whose main business is filling out returns for a fee. It does not include the accounting firms that also do taxes, and it does not include the software publishers whose products you use to file yourself — both sit in other codes (Section 2). That distinction matters a lot for sizing the industry and for finding ways to invest in it.

Why it is worth understanding: filing a tax return is legally mandatory, annual, and stubbornly complicated, which makes demand unusually recession-resistant and predictable. The U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) processed roughly 161 million individual income-tax returns in 2024, and about 85 million of those were prepared and e-filed for a fee by a paid practitioner [9]. The trade-off is that this is a mature, slow-growing, intensely seasonal business — most of a year's revenue and hiring is crammed into January through April — with a long-running threat that free or government-run filing, and now artificial intelligence, could hollow out the simple end.

The ways in differ by investor type. For public-market investors there is essentially one pure play (H&R Block) plus one giant whose tax software is dominant but is only a fraction of the company (Intuit). For private investors, the more direct routes are owning a franchise, running an independent practice, backing a tax-software company, or riding the private-equity wave now rolling up the accounting and tax profession (Sections 4 and 10). The central question in either case is whether a given business earns durable returns from scarce tax expertise and customer loyalty — or competes mainly on commodity software pricing.

2. What it is, and how it's structured

Scope. NAICS 541213 covers establishments "primarily engaged in preparing individual or business income-tax returns" without also offering the broader accounting, auditing, bookkeeping, billing, or payroll services that define a full accounting practice [1]. Think H&R Block, Jackson Hewitt, Liberty Tax, and the tens of thousands of one- and two-person seasonal offices.

What it excludes — and this is the key to reading the numbers:

• 541211 — Offices of Certified Public Accountants (CPAs): full CPA firms, which prepare a large share of the nation's more complex returns.
• 541219 — Other Accounting Services: bookkeepers and non-CPA accountants who also do tax work.
• 541214 — Payroll Services.
• Software publishing (NAICS 513210): the companies that write consumer tax software — Intuit's TurboTax, TaxAct, TaxSlayer, FreeTaxUSA, Drake — are classified as software developers, not as tax-prep services. Do-it-yourself (DIY) filing revenue therefore does not land in 541213 at all.

Business models. The industry runs on four overlapping models:

• Independent preparers and small local firms, usually built around the owner's client relationships.
• Franchise networks that supply brand, software, training, marketing, and compliance support.
• Digital DIY platforms that monetize software fees, state filings, expert add-ons, and financial products.
• Assisted-digital services that combine online document collection with human review or full preparation.

Ownership mix. The industry is a barbell. At one end are a few branded chains operating a company-owned-plus-franchise model. At the other is a very long tail of small, often single-preparer, frequently seasonal businesses — many of them sole proprietors with no employees. Ownership spans public corporations, family-owned firms, private-equity-backed platforms, franchisees, and thousands of independents; there is essentially no public-utility, cooperative, or government ownership here. A caution that recurs throughout: a company's total revenue should not be read as NAICS 541213 revenue, because large platforms also sell software, professional tax tools, accounting products, or financial services classified elsewhere.

3. How big it is

Our federal (U.S. Census Bureau and SBA) figures for NAICS 541213:

The firm count (18,613) is lower than the establishment count (28,762) because one firm can operate several offices. The employment figure is a March-12 snapshot, not a full-year average — which matters enormously in a seasonal business (below) [1].

Two caveats dominate the picture.

Undercount by scope. The $7.26 billion receipts figure captures only the standalone tax-prep firms. It leaves out the large volume of returns done inside CPA and accounting firms (codes 541211/541219) and every dollar of DIY software revenue (which sits in software publishing). Commercial research firms that fold those in put the broader U.S. "tax preparation" market at roughly $32–34 billion for 2024–25 [6] — several times the federal services figure, precisely because they count what 541213 leaves out. Neither number is "wrong"; they measure different things. For a clean read of the service industry, use $7.26 billion; for the whole consumer-tax ecosystem, the larger figures apply.

Undercount by firm type. County Business Patterns counts only employer establishments; it excludes self-employed people, firms without employees, and businesses with no employer identification number [4]. That is especially significant here because one-person, non-employer tax shops are common. The true count of people preparing returns for a fee is therefore far higher than 28,762 establishments implies — the IRS lists roughly 800,000 active paid preparers nationwide (Section 7) [11]. Our federal file does not provide a reliable total return volume, average fee, non-employer receipts, or private-company margins, so none is invented here.

Seasonality. This is one of the most seasonal industries in the economy. First-quarter payroll ($1.02 billion) is nearly a third of the entire year's payroll [1], and the March head-count of ~134,000 understates the February–April peak, when chains hire tens of thousands of temporary preparers. A firm's whole year is effectively won or lost in about fourteen weeks.

Concentration. Within this specific code, concentration is only moderate: the largest 4 firms took 27.2% of receipts, the top 8 took 29.2%, the top 20 took 31.8%, and the top 50 took 34.6% (2022) [2]. (The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index — HHI, a standard concentration measure — is suppressed in the federal data and so is not reported here [2].) That looks surprisingly unconcentrated for an industry everyone associates with H&R Block and TurboTax — but it is exactly what the scope exclusions predict: the software duopoly and the CPA firms are counted elsewhere, leaving the storefront code itself fragmented across thousands of small offices.

4. The investable universe

Pure, publicly traded tax-prep plays are scarce. The table separates the two public names (only one is a pure play) from the significant private owners.

Bottom line for public investors: H&R Block is the only sizeable listed company whose fortunes rise and fall with tax prep specifically. Buying Intuit gets you the category's dominant software franchise, but you are mostly buying a small-business-software and consumer-fintech company that happens to own TurboTax. Everything else of scale is private, so public investors should analyze the tax-segment economics rather than assume total-company results represent this industry.

5. How the money works

Owners in this industry make money on a simple identity: revenue = number of returns prepared × net average charge per return. H&R Block reports exactly those two levers — return volume and "net average charge" — as its core drivers [7]. Everything else is about widening the gap between that revenue and a largely fixed, highly seasonal cost base.

The two channels have opposite economics.

• Assisted (in-office, human preparer): high price per return — nationally, a simple Form 1040 averages roughly $220 and an itemized return about $323, with complex returns running $300–$800 [26] — but labor- and space-heavy.
• DIY software: very low price per return but almost no marginal cost, so gross margins are high and the game is volume and mix. The growth engine is the hybrid — human help delivered through software (TurboTax Live, H&R Block's virtual/assisted options). At Intuit, TurboTax Live revenue grew about 47% in fiscal 2025 and reached roughly 41% of consumer revenue, with paying units and revenue-per-return rising even as total TurboTax units were flat-to-down [8]. Pushing customers "up" from free/basic to a paid expert is where the money increasingly is.

Revenue lines across the industry: per-return preparation fees; federal and state software fees; charges for extra forms, expert review, or full service; franchise royalties, marketing fees, and technology fees; professional tax-software licensing; and high-margin financial products.

Ancillary "bank products" are a real profit center. Because many customers file chiefly to get a refund, preparers layer on add-ons: refund transfers (the fee is deducted from your refund so you pay nothing up front), refund-advance loans (a short-term loan of $250–$4,000 against the expected refund), prepaid cards (H&R Block's Emerald Card), and audit-protection plans — typically delivered through third-party banks [26]. These monetize lower-income, often unbanked filers and smooth the firm's cash flow, but they carry bank-partner and consumer-protection risk (Section 9).

The franchise model lets chains grow with little capital: franchisees fund the offices and pay royalties (a percentage of revenue) back to the brand, giving the franchisor a high-margin, asset-light income stream on top of its company-owned stores.

Metrics to watch: returns filed by channel (volume); net average charge / revenue per return (price); the assisted-vs-DIY-vs-live mix; free-to-paid conversion; client retention year over year; returns per preparer and per office during peak weeks; labor and marketing cost per return; franchise-vs-company-owned economics; and — because of seasonality — seasonal cash generation, since a weak February–April cannot be recovered later. This is not a same-store-sales business in the retail sense; the better question is whether each preparer, office, and digital customer produces more profitable returns over time.

6. What drives demand

• Tax-code complexity — the master driver. The harder the code, the more people pay for help. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), signed July 2025, added new and often temporary provisions (deductions for tips and overtime, "Trump accounts," changed state-and-local-tax (SALT) limits), several of them retroactive; tax professionals project a 10–15% increase in 1040 complexity for the 2026 filing season [20]. That is a tailwind for paid prep.
• The size and mix of the filing population. Roughly 161 million individual returns a year [9], and near-universal electronic filing — during the 2026 filing season the IRS had processed about 139 million individual returns, ~98% of them e-filed [10]. (E-filing is a channel metric, not a measure of paid demand: many returns are self-prepared or filed free.) More gig/1099 income, investment income, and small-business activity means more complex returns that resist DIY.
• Complexity and anxiety at the household level: self-employment and multiple income forms; investments, home sales, rental property, and digital assets; multiple states, marriage, divorce, retirement, and estate issues; language, accessibility, and identity-theft concerns; and simply wanting an expert on call if the IRS sends a notice.
• The DIY-vs-assisted migration. Simple returns for younger, lower-income filers keep shifting to free or low-cost software, eroding the bottom of the assisted market while the complex middle and the refund-driven segment stay loyal [5].
• Free-filing alternatives cap the simple end. IRS Free File — a public-private partnership offering free guided software to filers with adjusted gross income (AGI) of $89,000 or less — reopened for 2026 through eight private-sector partners [19]. How aggressively free options are promoted directly limits paid-prep demand at the simple end.
• Refund dynamics and the economy. Refund size, Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) eligibility, and IRS processing speed shape how many people file early and buy refund products.

7. Regulation

The defining regulatory fact is how lightly the preparers themselves are licensed at the federal level — paired with heavy obligations around e-filing and data security.

• No federal competency license is required to prepare returns for pay. In Loving v. IRS (D.C. Circuit, 2014), the courts struck down the IRS's mandatory "Registered Tax Return Preparer" testing-and-education regime, holding the agency lacked statutory authority [12]. Anyone may therefore prepare federal returns for a fee without passing a competency exam.
• PTIN and EFIN. Every paid preparer must hold a Preparer Tax Identification Number (PTIN) from the IRS, and a firm that e-files client returns generally needs a firm-level Electronic Filing Identification Number (EFIN) [14]. There are roughly 800,000 PTIN holders; of those about 203,000 are CPAs, ~47,000 are enrolled agents (EAs — federally licensed tax specialists with full IRS practice rights), and ~32,000 are attorneys, while the majority — over 460,000 — are non-credentialed [11].
• E-file mandate. A preparer who reasonably expects to file 11 or more covered federal returns in a year generally must e-file them [14].
• Representation rights. Attorneys, CPAs, and EAs have unlimited rights to represent clients before the IRS; non-credentialed preparers can obtain limited rights through the voluntary Annual Filing Season Program (AFSP, ~72,000 participants), the IRS's post-Loving substitute for mandatory standards [11][13]. Circular 230 governs practice before the IRS, and preparers may not base fees on a percentage of the refund [26].
• State patchwork. Only a handful of states — California, Oregon, Maryland, and New York among them — register, test, or bond paid preparers; most do not [13].
• Data security is a major, enforced obligation. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Safeguards Rule expressly covers tax-preparation firms and requires a written information-security program; IRS guidance requires tax professionals to maintain a Written Information Security Plan (WISP); and Internal Revenue Code (IRC) §7216 restricts unauthorized use or disclosure of tax-return information without taxpayer consent [15].
• Consumer protection — the live front. The FTC and state attorneys general (AGs) police marketing and refund products. Intuit paid $141 million to all 50 states in 2022 to settle claims it steered customers eligible for free filing into paid TurboTax [16]. A separate FTC administrative order against Intuit over "free" advertising was vacated by the Fifth Circuit in March 2026, which held — leaning on the Supreme Court's SEC v. Jarkesy — that the FTC cannot decide such cases in its own in-house tribunal and must go to federal court instead [17].
• Government-run filing. The IRS's own free tool, Direct File, was piloted in 2024 and offered in 25 states for the 2025 season, then wound down — reported as not available for the 2026 filing season, with the Treasury describing it as suspended and under reconsideration [18]. Its demise removes a competitive threat to the paid and Free File channels, but the political fight over free government filing is not settled.

For investors, regulation is not just a compliance line: a data breach, a fraudulent return, preparer misconduct, or a failure to update software can create litigation, remediation costs, reputational damage, and customer losses.

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

The competitive map is two different worlds stapled together. In DIY software, concentration is extreme: two firms — Intuit and H&R Block — account for the large majority of consumer software filings, with TurboTax estimated to hold a majority share on its own [5]. In assisted, storefront prep, the field is fragmented across thousands of small offices, three franchise brands (H&R Block, Jackson Hewitt, Liberty Tax), and a shrinking base of aging independents — which is why the code's national concentration ratios look modest even though brands dominate the public imagination.

The strategic battleground is the middle — human help delivered digitally — where both giants race (TurboTax Live, H&R Block virtual) to move customers up from free to paid-expert tiers [7][8]. Software keeps eating the simple end; the chains defend by pairing brand and physical presence with online options. Advantage comes from brand trust, tax-law expertise, software accuracy, customer history, preparer recruiting, office density, and secure handling of sensitive data. Simple returns have low switching costs; complex returns and long-standing client relationships are far more defensible.

Consolidation happens by acquiring local practices and their client books, buying franchise territories or converting franchise offices to company ownership (H&R Block has disclosed franchise buy-ins that shift royalty revenue into company-owned operations), combining consumer software with professional tax tools (TaxAct/Drake), and using private equity to build multi-brand platforms [7][22][23].

Meanwhile, a bigger consolidation story plays out one code over, among the CPA and accounting firms (541211/541219) that do the complex tax work: private equity (PE) is buying in aggressively — New Mountain into Grant Thornton, the Baker Tilly–Moss Adams merger backed by Hellman & Friedman, Blackstone into Citrin Cooperman — at valuations reported up to ~15× EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization), and using those platforms to roll up hundreds of smaller firms [25]. That reshapes the professional tax landscape even though most of it is booked outside 541213 itself.

9. Risks

• Free and government filing. Direct File is gone for 2026, but simplification of the tax code or a return-free/pre-filled filing system (as several countries use) is a genuine tail risk to the simple-return franchise [18].
• Artificial intelligence. Large language models and smarter software can commoditize routine returns and compress prices — a threat to human preparers and, simultaneously, a productivity tool for them.
• Consumer-protection and litigation exposure, especially around "free" marketing and refund-advance/refund-transfer products [16][17].
• Single-season concentration. With about a third of payroll in one quarter [1], any disruption to the January–April window — a late IRS opening, refund delays, an outage, weak marketing, weather — hits the whole year and cannot be recovered.
• Cybersecurity and privacy. Tax firms hold Social Security numbers, income data, bank details, and identity documents; a breach is both a regulatory and a reputational event [15].
• Preparer and franchise quality. One bad preparer or franchisee can damage a national brand; royalty changes, territory disputes, and technology fees can strain operator relationships.
• Pricing pressure. Free tiers and low-cost competitors make customer acquisition expensive and cap price increases for simple returns.
• Financial-product exposure. Refund advances and related products add bank-partner, credit, and regulatory risk.
• Labor and talent. The independent-preparer base is aging out and seasonal staffing is a perennial challenge; PE-driven roll-ups may also raise fees for clients [25].
• Data limitations. Federal employer statistics understate small and non-employer activity, making market-share and growth estimates less precise [4].

Forward-looking judgment: the biggest risk is not that tax filing disappears, but that the profitable portion of the market shifts toward free or self-service channels faster than firms can move customers into complex, assisted, or adjacent financial products.

10. How to invest, and the outlook

Public-market routes.

• H&R Block (NYSE: HRB) is the only sizeable listed pure play — a mature, cash-generative, mid-cap business that returns capital through dividends and buybacks. It is a value-and-income profile, not a growth story, and its results are tightly levered to one filing season [7]. Watch return volume, revenue per return, paid online conversion, the assisted-vs-DIY mix, preparer productivity, retention, and segment cash generation.
• Intuit (NASDAQ: INTU) is the way to own TurboTax, but you are buying a large, premium-multiple software-and-fintech company in which tax is roughly a quarter of revenue [8] — a bet on the whole Intuit ecosystem as much as on tax.
• The DIY software challengers (TaxAct/Drake, TaxSlayer, FreeTaxUSA) are privately held, so there is no direct listed exposure to them.

Private routes are, for this industry, the more literal way in: buy or build a franchise (H&R Block, Jackson Hewitt, or Liberty Tax franchisees commonly operate several offices each); acquire a local CPA/EA practice with a transferable client base; back a tax-software or professional-tax-tools company; invest in a PE platform combining software, preparation, and financial products; or supply the industry (technology, compliance, cybersecurity, or payment vendors serving preparers) [21][22][25]. Diligence should center on client retention, revenue per return, tax-professional turnover, software reliability, state registrations, data-security controls, franchise contracts, seasonality and cash conversion, and how portable the client relationships are if the owner retires.

Near-term drivers (forward-looking). The OBBBA complexity wave is likely a tailwind for paid preparation through the 2026–27 seasons, as more filers conclude they need help with new and retroactive provisions [20]. The wind-down of Direct File removes one free-filing threat and channels simple filers back toward Free File and paid products [18]. Expect revenue growth to keep coming more from price and mix — pushing customers into higher-priced "assisted-digital" tiers — than from unit growth, which is roughly flat [8]. Longer term, the two swing factors are artificial intelligence (which could either commoditize simple returns or make preparers far more productive) and the politics of free government filing, paused but not settled. On balance, the paid-prep business looks durable and defensible at the complex end and structurally pressured at the simple end — a mature industry that grows with the tax code's complexity rather than with the economy.

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns 2023 (NAICS 541213: employer establishments, employment, annual payroll, first-quarter payroll). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html
2. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census — Summary Statistics and Concentration of Largest Firms (NAICS 541213: receipts, firms, CR4/CR8/CR20/CR50; HHI suppressed). https://data.census.gov/table/ECNSIZE2022.EC2200SIZECONCEN
3. U.S. Small Business Administration, Table of Small Business Size Standards (NAICS 541213: $25 million average annual receipts), 2023. https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
4. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns — Methodology (employer-only coverage; excludes non-employers and self-employed). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/technical-documentation/methodology.html
5. IBISWorld, Tax Preparation Services in the US — Industry Analysis, 2026. https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/industry/tax-preparation-services/1399/
6. The Business Research Company, Tax Preparation Services Market — Size, Share and Trends Analysis, 2025 (broader U.S. market ~$32–34B, counting software and CPA-firm tax work excluded from 541213). https://www.thebusinessresearchcompany.com/market-insights/tax-preparation-services-market-insights-2025
7. H&R Block, Inc., Fiscal 2025 Form 10-K / Results (revenue ~$3.8B; 11.3M U.S. assisted returns and 3.8M paid online DIY returns; 6,701 company-owned and 2,013 franchise offices; "net average charge" driver; franchise buy-ins), 2025. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0000012659&type=10-K
8. Intuit Inc., Fiscal 2025 Fourth-Quarter and Full-Year Results / Form 10-K (Consumer/TurboTax segment ~$4.87B; TurboTax Live revenue +~47% and ~41% of consumer revenue), 2025. https://investors.intuit.com/news-events/press-releases
9. Internal Revenue Service, Filing Season Statistics, 2024 (≈161M individual returns; ≈85M paid-preparer e-filed returns). https://www.irs.gov/statistics/filing-season-statistics
10. National Taxpayer Advocate, 2026 Mid-Year Report to Congress (≈139M individual returns processed during the 2026 filing season; ~98% e-filed). https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/national-taxpayer-advocate-issues-2026-mid-year-report-to-congress
11. Internal Revenue Service, Return Preparer Office — Federal Tax Return Preparer Statistics (≈800,000 PTIN holders; ~203,000 CPAs, ~47,000 EAs, ~32,000 attorneys, 460,000+ non-credentialed, ~72,000 AFSP), 2024–25. https://www.irs.gov/tax-professionals/return-preparer-office-federal-tax-return-preparer-statistics
12. Loving v. IRS, 742 F.3d 1013 (D.C. Cir. 2014) (IRS lacked authority to mandate preparer testing/education). https://www.irs.gov/tax-professionals
13. Internal Revenue Service, Understanding Tax Return Preparer Credentials and Qualifications (representation rights; AFSP; Circular 230); with California, New York, and Oregon state-preparer registration/licensing guidance. https://www.irs.gov/tax-professionals/understanding-tax-return-preparer-credentials-and-qualifications
14. Internal Revenue Service, PTIN Requirements, EFIN FAQs, and E-file Requirements for Specified Tax Return Preparers (11-or-more e-file mandate). https://www.irs.gov/tax-professionals/ptin-requirements-for-tax-return-preparers
15. Federal Trade Commission, Safeguards Rule — What Your Business Needs to Know; IRS Written Information Security Plan (WISP) guidance; and IRC §7216 (restrictions on use/disclosure of return information). https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/ftc-safeguards-rule-what-your-business-needs-know
16. NPR / State Attorneys General, TurboTax maker Intuit to pay $141M settlement over misleading "free" ads, 2022. https://www.npr.org/2022/05/04/1096612276/turbotax-free-tax-filing-intuit-settlement
17. Forbes (Kelly Phillips Erb), Intuit Wins Big in FTC Fight Over TurboTax "Free" Ads (Fifth Circuit vacates FTC order citing SEC v. Jarkesy, March 2026). https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/
18. U.S. Government Accountability Office, Direct File: IRS Successfully Piloted Online Tax Filing but Opportunities Exist to Expand Access (GAO-25-106933), 2025; with news coverage of Direct File's wind-down and unavailability for the 2026 filing season. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-106933
19. Internal Revenue Service, IRS Free File for 2026 (AGI ≤ $89,000; eight Free File Alliance partners), 2026. https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/use-irs-free-file-to-conveniently-file-your-return-at-no-cost
20. Tax Foundation / Thomson Reuters, One Big Beautiful Bill Act — tax changes and 2026 filing-season impact (projected 10–15% rise in 1040 complexity), 2025. https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/one-big-beautiful-bill-act-tax-changes/
21. Jackson Hewitt, Our Company and Strategic Partnership with Corsair Capital (2018); Franchising.com, Jackson Hewitt franchise overview (≈6,000 offices incl. ~3,000 Walmart kiosks). https://www.jacksonhewitt.com/about-us/our-company/
22. Cinven, Cinven to Acquire TaxAct (~$720M; combined with Drake Software), 2022. https://www.cinven.com/news-insights/cinven-to-acquire-taxact/
23. JTH Tax, LLC (Liberty Tax), 2025 Franchise Disclosure Document (indirect parent BP LTCT LLC after January 2024 asset sale to lenders; 1,764 U.S. offices at Dec 31, 2024). https://www.nasaaefd.org/
24. TaxSlayer, LLC (Rhodes Financial Services, LLC) and FreeTaxUSA / TaxHawk, Inc. — company materials. https://www.taxslayer.com/taxslayer-history/
25. Bloomberg Tax / CPA Trendlines / Forbes, Private-equity consolidation of accounting and tax firms — Grant Thornton (New Mountain), Baker Tilly–Moss Adams (Hellman & Friedman), Citrin Cooperman (Blackstone); valuations up to ~15× EBITDA, 2024–25. https://news.bloombergtax.com/financial-accounting/private-equity-fueled-shakeup-coming-for-accounting-industry
26. MoneyRates / Madras Accountancy, Cost of tax preparation and refund products, 2025–26 (avg. ~$220 simple / ~$323 itemized; complex $300–$800; refund advances $250–$4,000; contingent-fee prohibition). https://www.moneyrates.com/savings/tax-preparation-cost.htm