One of the most common mistakes I see business owners make is confusing cost with value.
On paper, the lowest fee often looks like the smartest decision. In reality, it’s frequently the most expensive one — just not right away.
I recently worked with a client who purchased a professional practice. They had used a low-cost provider to prepare their tax return. That provider did exactly what they were paid to do: they took what was in QuickBooks and plugged the numbers into the return.
What they didn’t do was ask questions.
They didn’t ask how the practice was acquired.
They didn’t ask what was purchased.
They didn’t ask whether the transaction had been properly recorded.
A cursory review revealed that the purchase of the practice was never capitalized. If left uncorrected, the client would have overpaid taxes by approximately $125,000 over the next 15 years. We immediately addressed the issue, and the client amended their return, resulting in an approximately $20,000 refund for the 2024 tax year.
That outcome didn’t come from clever tax strategies.
It came from paying attention.
This wasn’t an isolated situation.
Several years ago, we reviewed returns for a business with two shareholders and discovered that their prior preparer had never taken a Domestic Production Activities Deduction they were clearly eligible for. We advised the shareholders of the issue and recommended they return to their preparer to amend the prior three years of returns.
By doing so, they were able to recover approximately $90,000 each for those three years.
The harder part of that conversation was explaining the rest.
They had been eligible for that deduction for roughly ten additional years, but those years were now closed. In other words, while they were able to recover what they could, they likely overpaid their taxes by close to $1 million over time — money that simply couldn’t be recovered.
Again, this wasn’t about aggressive planning.
It was about something being missed entirely.
Compliance Is Cheap. Judgment Is Not.
There is nothing wrong with compliance work. But compliance without context is dangerous.
A tax return prepared without understanding the underlying business decisions is just numbers in boxes. And the result depends entirely on which boxes those numbers are put into.
Low-cost providers are often built to process information, not challenge it. They don’t have the time — or sometimes the incentive — to slow down and ask whether the story behind the numbers actually makes sense.
Business owners often don’t realize what they’re missing until something goes wrong:
- Overpaid taxes
- Missed deductions or credits
- No projections
- No proactive planning
- A return that shows up on April 15 with a balance due and no explanation
I hear versions of this story all the time from prospective clients who reach out after an experience that simply wasn’t acceptable.
What You’re Really Paying For
When you hire an advisor, you’re not paying for data entry. You’re paying for judgment.
You’re paying for someone who:
- Asks the questions you didn’t know to ask
- Listens to what you’re saying — and what you’re not
- Understands how today’s decision affects tomorrow’s outcome
The key to a good advisor relationship isn’t the fee. It’s communication.
If your advisor doesn’t know what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, or where you’re trying to go, they can’t help you get there — no matter how inexpensive they are.
Seeing the Whole Field
In baseball, you don’t judge a play by watching the ball alone — you watch the entire field.
In golf, you don’t focus only on the swing — you read the lie, the wind, and the green.
Business decisions work the same way.
The cheapest option usually focuses on what’s immediately in front of you. The best option looks at the whole field.
The difference rarely shows up on day one. But over time, it shows up in missed opportunities, unnecessary taxes, and decisions that quietly compound in the wrong direction.
Cheap feels good at the start.
Value proves itself over time.
