Specialty credits require engineering analysis and documentation that sit outside normal tax preparation. That's not a failing — it's a different discipline.
A question we get asked in a slightly accusatory tone, usually about halfway through a first call: "If this is real, why hasn't my CPA been doing it?"
The implication is that somebody has been asleep. Usually nobody has.
Two different jobs
Tax compliance is the discipline of recording what happened and reporting it correctly. It requires deep knowledge of the code, meticulous accuracy, and a great deal of work compressed into a few months a year. A good CPA is worth their weight.
Specialty credit work is a different activity. A research credit study requires interviewing engineers about technical uncertainty, evaluating projects against a four-part statutory test, allocating wages by activity, and building contemporaneous documentation that will hold up under examination years later. A cost segregation study requires reading construction documents and cost records and allocating a building into component assets — engineering work, performed by engineers.
Neither of those is tax preparation. Expecting a preparer to do them between January and April, on top of the returns, is expecting the wrong thing.
Why firms decline the work
The good reasons, and they are good ones:
- They cannot substantiate it to the standard they are comfortable signing. A CPA who declines to claim a credit they cannot defend is protecting you.
- It is outside their professional lane. A cost segregation study performed by someone without engineering competence is weaker under examination than no study at all.
- The liability is real. They sign the return.
Those are the marks of a careful advisor, not a lazy one.
What the arrangement should look like
Your CPA keeps the relationship and files the return. That is not a courtesy — it is the correct structure. They know your business, your history and your risk posture.
The specialty firm performs the study, builds the documentation, and hands the preparer a package they can file from, then answers their questions directly. Your team's time is measured in hours.
Be wary of any firm that wants to displace your CPA. A provider that requires you to move your tax work in order to claim a credit is solving their commercial problem, not your tax problem.
The question worth asking
Not "why didn't my CPA do this," but "would my CPA file this if someone else built it properly?"
In our experience the answer is almost always yes, and the conversation goes well — because we are not asking them to take a position they cannot support. We are handing them the substantiation that makes the position supportable.
If your preparer has questions about our methodology, we would rather answer them before the engagement than after.