Big 4 Expertise, Boutique Attention: Why This Combination Matters
Summary
Founders looking into R&D tax credits often think that they have to choose between a large, credentialed firm that is nationally known, or one that is small and knows their business. This isn’t necessarily the case, as firms that protect a claim best are the ones that combine real technical depth with the kind of attention a boutique structure makes possible.
The False Choice Founders Face
When a business starts investigating R&D tax credits, the search generally narrows to two kinds of firms.
1. A large, credentialed firm with a recognizable name, that shows up on hats at PGA tournaments and represents some very large companies.
2. A small firm, one that feels personalized, responsive, and willing to learn your business inside and out.
It’s not uncommon for us to encounter founders who assume they have to pick one or the other: large and detached, or tiny and personal, just hoping that they have enough technical expertise to defend their claim if the IRS did ever ask a question.
The short answer: we don’t think you should have to compromise, and that’s why we’ve built RK the way that we have.
Why Credentials Matter
There is a reason that clients ask about our team’s background, and it’s a fair question. IRC §41 is fact-specific, and the IRS has decades of experience pushing back on claims that do not hold up, so it’s not surprising that the founder of a business would be skeptical of who they trust with something like R&D tax credits. A team that has spent years inside large accounting firms has seen pushback up close, and that experience has given them the knowledge of what a defensible claim looks like.
In our C Suite alone we have two people from Big 4 backgrounds. Scott Durepo, our tax attorney and head of compliance, spent two decades practicing tax law before joining RK, and much of that was spent defending R&D tax claims. April Zozzaro, CPA, leads our consulting practice, and spent years at a Big 4 firms helping to deliver hundreds of millions of dollars in R&D credits before she helped build our technical approach from the rounds up.
That kind of experience is not about pedigree for the sake of it. It means our team is capable of looking at a business’s activities and know what will hold up and won’t not. That kind of expertise only comes from seeing what holds up and what does not firsthand.
Why Staying Boutique Matters
Large firms are not always built for your business specifically. A firm operating at scale needs standardized processes to manage thousands of accounts, and that usually means junior staff doing much of the hands-on work, partner attention spread thin, and processes that were established for the “average” client, not any specific one.
We built RK to work the opposite way. Our partners and senior consultants are involved in every client we take on, not just above a certain size. That’s a deliberate structural choice, and one that is only feasible because we chose to stay focused on one thing instead of building a full-service CPA firm.
Being intentionally smaller also means we can adapt to a business that doesn’t fit a standard template of what people assume fits into the R&D tax credit box. This means that even though agriculture, software, life sciences, defense tech, manufacturers, and a whole slew of other sectors all perform and document research and development activities in very different ways, we’re capable of identifying all of these and compiling a study that maximizes credits, regardless of industry.
What This Combination Protects
This isn’t just a nice way to work, it changes the quality of the credit claim itself. The George v. Commissioner case is a good example of what happens when the underlying activity is real, but the documentation isn’t exactly what it needs to be. The court agreed that livestock research could qualify under §41, a huge win for taxpayers in the agriculture sector and elsewhere, but they still lost a piece of their claim because the records didn’t hold up to scrutiny. The court applied a narrow version of the Cohan rule, allowing some estimates, but it couldn’t fill the gaps that better contemporaneous documentation would’ve closed.
That is exactly where the combination of technical expertise and close attention pays off. Our technical depth lets us find and identify exactly what the IRS will scrutinize, while our close attention to detail allows us to compile the specific facts of your business activities, leading to a credit claim that can withstand a closer look.
The Standard RK Was Built Around
RK Partners was not founded to become the biggest firm in the country. It was started because it was clear that businesses were underclaiming or not properly submitting claims that could withstand IRS scrutiny. In order to bridge that gap, we hold ourselves to a standard, for every single claim for every single business with work with. We pride ourselves on being experts and caring deeply about your company. We care deeply about ours, so we know that it matters, and that getting your tax credits can be a vital piece of your business’s ability to continue innovating.
