Taxes, tax filing, NEW 640 x 640
Mercer Advisors Inc. says that its tax services and accounting business, Mercer Advisors Tax Services, expects to file about 10,000 tax returns for its clients this tax season, up 117% from roughly 4,600 a year ago. Its tax team now includes 120 tax professionals versus 60 in 2024, and over 75% of returns they complete involve a mix of work for individuals, trusts and entities.
"We're experiencing tremendous growth in the number of families who find significant benefit in having their taxes, investment management, financial planning, estate planning — their whole balance sheet — guided by a unified team," Mercer Advisors' chief commercial officer, Jeremiah Barlow, said in a statement.
Since launching its tax and estate services in 2012, Mercer has acquired 19 RIAs with tax practices. The tax unit handles complex situations involving business owners "with multi-layered entity structures, partnerships with diverse sub-entities, and multi-generational families managing sophisticated trusts, estates, and gifting strategies," it says.
Some of the recently added partners firms include Beach Freeman Lim & Cleland of El Segundo, California, which has 20 tax professionals, and Singer Burke, a wealth management firm based in Los Angeles.
With its expanding level of professionals and services, Mercer should be able to fill a vacuum in the tax planning space, says Doug Beach, managing director of tax services at Beach Freeman Lim & Cleland: "On one side, there are mass market firms focused on high-volume but low-complexity tax returns; then there are firms that focus on corporate taxes first and may do some taxes for individuals as a concession. We see a tremendous opportunity in the broad middle with clients who need a more hands-on and integrated approach."
There's also a good opportunity for wealth management firms to expand their work in the tax space as the accounting industry finds itself "in transition," according to Mercer. Many accountants are close to retirement, leaving CPA firms to make a tough choice between staying independent in the face of "growing pressure" or merging with large accounting firms.
"Partnering with a holistic wealth management firm to deliver a family office suite of services presents an attractive alternative," the firm said.
Denver-based Mercer Global Advisors, which is majority owned by Oak Hill Capital, Genstar Capital and Altas Partners, has over 1,560 employees and works with about $98 billion in client assets.
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