Business Data & Benchmarks · United States

CPA Firm Revenue Benchmark

Offices of certified public accountants.

NAICS 541211, 2022 editionUnited States data by defaultSources and dates shown

Average CPA Firm Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

The average below divides the combined 2022 receipts of CPA offices with paid employees by the number of such offices the Economic Census counted.

≈$2,660,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

54,409

Employer establishments in the United States, 2022

as published $144.7 billion

Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022

How this is calculated: about $144.7 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 54,409 employer establishments works out to $2,660,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.

Scope: Offices of Certified Public Accountants (NAICS 541211). Covers offices of certified public accountants, not bookkeeping or payroll services. Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.

Compliance work recurs on a calendar, which gives this category a more predictable revenue base than most professional services. The concentration of that work into a few months also means capacity is planned around a peak the annual figure below cannot show.

Bookkeeping, payroll services and non CPA tax preparation are separate Census categories.

Source US Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, Summary Statistics (ECNBASIC): ESTAB, RCPTOT and PAYANN by NAICS · Vintage 2022 Economic Census · Calculation BusinessNES · Accessed July 2026

Where these figures come from
Establishment counts and combined receipts are published figures from the official source named in each figure's source line. BusinessNES divides one by the other and rounds to the nearest $10,000; no other adjustment is made. The full chain from published figure to this page is described on the methodology page.

Data Source Notice

This product uses the Census Bureau Data API but is not endorsed or certified by the Census Bureau.

Figures above are from the 2022 Economic Census reference year, released by the Census Bureau in 2024 and 2025; markets have moved since.

Employer Establishments at Year Five Varies by cohort

Accounting, Tax Preparation, Bookkeeping, and Payroll Services, NAICS 5412, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.

64.4%the year-five count as a share of the starting count

Five-year establishment continuation benchmarkLine chart of industry continuation: 81.1 percent at 1 year, 75.6 percent at 2 years, 72.6 percent at 3 years, 67.8 percent at 4 years, 64.4 percent at 5 years. 7,648 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.100%75%50%25%0%2014-2018 cohort range: 56.9 to 72.0 percentStart: 100 percent, the starting count1 year: 81.1 percent of the starting count2 years: 75.6 percent of the starting count3 years: 72.6 percent of the starting count4 years: 67.8 percent of the starting count5 years: 64.4 percent of the starting count81.175.672.667.864.4Start1 year2 years3 years4 years5 years7,648 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.
Five years on, this industry group counted about 64 establishments aged five for every 100 that first reported paid employment in 2018. Census compares counts by age rather than following the same businesses, so read it as a broad continuation indicator for the industry group, not as a tracked survival rate.

Results across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts ranged from 56.9 to 72.0 percent, so treat this as a directional benchmark rather than a precise forecast. This benchmark covers Accounting, Tax Preparation, Bookkeeping, and Payroll Services, NAICS 5412, as a whole. It is not a survival rate for CPA firms on their own: they are 54,409 of the 136,861 employer establishments in that group, about 40 percent of it. How this is measured

Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data

Payroll covers accountants and seasonal preparers, the capacity a practice sells.

Cost lineShare of receipts
Annual payroll share of receipts, United States≈37%

Payroll share of receipts, Offices of Certified Public Accountants, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 37.0 percent of every revenue dollar in this category goes to annual payroll. As the census defines it, payroll includes wages, salaries, reported tips, commissions and bonuses; it excludes employer-paid benefits, employer payroll taxes, contractor payments and owner compensation. Treat it as one verified anchor, not a full labor cost breakdown. Payroll covers licensed accountants and seasonal staff hired for the filing period.

This is not total labor cost or profit margin.

How to read this number
Payroll here is the census annual payroll figure, PAYANN: it includes wages, salaries, reported tips, commissions and bonuses paid to employees, and it excludes employer-paid benefits, employer payroll taxes, contractor payments and proprietor compensation. BusinessNES divides it by the same category total receipts, RCPTOT, and rounds to a whole percent.

Position Within Its Comparison Group Computed from official data

Where this category sits among 7 legal and accounting practices in the same 2022 Economic Census release. Ranks and the group median are computed on exact values, before the rounding used above.

MeasureThis categoryGroup medianRank
Revenue per employer establishment$2,660,025$1,276,4502 of 7
Payroll share of receipts36.63%36.63%4 of 7
Employer establishments54,40927,8122 of 7

Position among 7 legal and accounting practices, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.

This category ranks 2nd of 7 by average annual revenue per employer establishment. It ranks 2nd of 7 by employer establishment count and 4th of 7 by payroll share. Payroll equals 36.63 percent of receipts here, exactly the group median. A higher or lower position is not a measure of profit or of business quality: the census reports receipts and payroll only.

Compared With Similar Business Types Computed from official data

The 4 categories closest to this one by average revenue inside the same comparison group.

Census categoryRevenue per establishmentPayroll shareEstablishments
Offices of Certified Public Accountants (this page)$2,660,02536.63%54,409
Offices of Lawyers$2,129,79636.43%167,174
Title Abstract and Settlement Offices$1,276,45038.18%9,824
All Other Legal Services$1,177,69532.84%5,083
Payroll Services$4,452,99761.70%5,966

Nearest categories by average revenue, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.

This category reports lower revenue per employer establishment than Payroll Services, and higher revenue than Offices of Lawyers, Title Abstract and Settlement Offices and All Other Legal Services. It contains more employer establishments than three of the four categories shown. Every figure in this table comes from the same 2022 Economic Census release and the same employer establishment population, so the columns are directly comparable.

Beyond the Benchmark BusinessNES analysis

What the census figures leave out about CPA firms, and what to look at instead.

What the numbers do not show

The annual figure hides a business that earns most of its fees in a few months. Capacity is planned around a peak, and the staff hired for it are paid before the fees arrive.

Receipts also cannot separate compliance from advisory work. Returns and audits recur predictably at modest fees; planning and transaction work pays better and arrives irregularly.

Operator lens

  • Annual filings create a base of work that recurs. Work that does not have to be won again is why buyers of these practices look closely at retained clients rather than at one year of fees.
  • Review capacity during filing season caps intake. A firm can only accept as many returns as it can review, and review resists delegation.

Questions to ask before starting or buying

  • What is the client retention rate? Ask how many clients filed in each of the last three years, because attrition is the quiet risk in a compliance practice.
  • How is the peak staffed? Seasonal preparers, contractors and overtime each carry different cost and different quality risk.
  • What proportion of fees is advisory? Advisory work carries better margins and weaker predictability, and the mix should be deliberate.
  • Who signs the returns? Licensed capacity is the constraint, and a practice dependent on one signer is dependent on one person.
  • What software and workpaper systems are in use? Migration between platforms during a filing season is a risk few practices survive gracefully.

Explore More on BusinessNES

More BusinessNES guides and rankings, plus neighboring benchmark pages built from the same verified data.

Sources and Methodology

Every figure on this page is bound to a published source, and each figure's own source line names that source precisely: the 2022 Economic Census for counts, receipts and payroll, and the Census Bureau's Business Dynamics Statistics for the industry continuation benchmark. Where a page shows a sector survival curve instead, that series comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

BusinessNES performs the arithmetic on those published figures and nothing else. Receipts are divided by establishments, and payroll by receipts. The age-five establishment count is divided by the age-zero establishment count for the same four-digit industry group, then repeated across five age-zero cohorts to give a reference and a range. This category's share of its industry group, along with the ranks, medians and nearest peers in the comparison sections, comes from the same published tables. Every one of them is recomputed from the sealed source files at each release and blocks publication if it does not match. Results are rounded and marked approximate. The reference year is 2022 for revenue and payroll; treat every figure as a baseline, not today's market.

Category scope matters: these figures cover Offices of Certified Public Accountants (NAICS 541211), employer establishments only. The scope note near the top of the page explains what that includes and excludes for this business type. Tax preparation services outside CPA offices are counted separately.

Full method, sources and limits
The methodology page describes the full chain for every figure on this site: the published source, the sealed snapshot it was read from, the exact calculation if BusinessNES performed one, and the honest limits of scope and vintage. Read the methodology.

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