Every year, lawmakers approve tax incentives designed to encourage businesses to do specific things: invest in new facilities, hire employees, develop new products, improve energy efficiency, or expand operations. In theory, those incentives free up cash for companies to reinvest in growth.
In practice, many businesses never claim them.
It’s easy to assume the problem’s eligibility. More often, though, it’s a lack of awareness. Many incentives get buried in thousands of pages of tax law, and discerning whether a business qualifies demands much more than prepping an annual tax return. Some require engineering analysis; others require technical documentation or industry-specific rules and interpretations outside the day-to-day work of most accounting firms.
This complexity has given rise to a rather specialized corner of the accounting profession: firms dedicated specifically to helping businesses navigate tax provisions that have grown increasingly technical over the last few decades, among them KBKG and Engineered Tax Services
KBKG, a specialty tax consulting firm founded in 1999. The company started with a relatively narrow focus: helping real estate owners understand how cost segregation might affect their properties’ tax treatment. Its development shows how a specialized accounting service can grow into a broader consulting practice.
Florida-based Engineered Tax Services, founded in 2001, built a practice combining engineering and tax services, including cost segregation and R&D tax credits. MSC, founded in 1996, is another firm operating in the specialty tax services market.
Winning Over Skeptics
Concepts like cost segregation are familiar enough to most real estate professionals and investors today. That wasn’t the case in 1999.
Cost segregation allows certain building components to be depreciated over shorter periods than the building itself, potentially accelerating tax deductions. Though the strategy had long been recognized under tax law, it wasn’t widely understood outside a relatively small group of specialists at the time.
That unfamiliarity created an unusual problem. Business owners often viewed the potential tax savings with skepticism. If the numbers sounded significant, many assumed they couldn’t be legitimate.
Rather than spending its early years marketing directly to property owners, KBKG invested heavily in education. Firm leaders presented at state CPA societies, spoke at industry conferences, and developed continuing professional education programs to explain not only how cost segregation worked but why it fit within the existing tax code. It was a slower approach than sales, but it also helped build confidence among the firm’s accounting professionals.
That educational work has continued alongside the firm’s consulting services. KBKG reports having issued more than 50,000 hours of Continuing Professional Education (CPE) credits, with programs attended by CPAs, professionals from major accounting firms, and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) personnel.
The Rise of Specialists
Cost segregation was just the start; over the next two decades, federal and state tax policy expanded to include incentives tied to R&D, energy-efficient construction, manufacturing, international operations, and other activities. Each new opportunity brought on another layer of technical complexity. For many companies, identifying those opportunities became less about finding deductions and more about understanding whether they existed.
That also changed the makeup of firms working in the space. Specialty tax consulting increasingly became multidisciplinary work. Engineers evaluated buildings. Attorneys interpreted regulations. Tax professionals analyzed statutory requirements. Economists weighed in on international tax matters. The work brought together people whose expertise had traditionally sat in separate professional fields.
KBKG wasn’t the only firm building a business around these needs. Engineered Tax Services’ work pointed to a common demand: businesses sometimes need help evaluating the tax implications of physical assets, research activity, energy investments, and other specialized areas that may require expertise beyond a general tax engagement.
Specialists like these generally work alongside rather than in place of companies’ existing CPAs. The accountant maintains the broader client relationship, while a specialist gets brought in for a project that calls for engineering, industry, tax, or other expertise outside the scope of routine prep. This opens access to a narrow area of expertise without having to maintain it in-house.
Education as competitive advantage
One of the more overlooked aspects of specialty tax consulting is that firms often spend as much time teaching as they do consulting. That has been true for KBKG since its earliest years. The firm sponsors professional education through the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy and the American Institute of Architects as a Continuing Education provider, with professionals lecturing to accounting organizations and industry groups.
The need for that education remains significant. “There is still a huge gap between the incentives available to businesses and the number of companies actually taking advantage of them,” says Gian Pazzia, chairman and chief strategy officer at KBKG. The challenge has been not only making businesses aware of potential incentives but also helping the professionals who advise them understand when a closer look may be needed.
This knowledge gap helps explain why education has become a regular part of the specialty tax field. Tax rules can create opportunities, but businesses often count on accountants and other advisors to recognize when a particular transaction or investment deserves more analysis.
Looking beyond tax season
For business owners, tax planning’s often associated with spring deadlines. In reality, many of the most valuable tax decisions happen long before returns get filed.
They happen when a company buys a building, invests in new tech, expands operations, or starts developing a new product. Those business decisions may create opportunities that aren’t always obvious without specialized analysis.
For growing businesses, the financial implications can go beyond the tax return. Tax benefits can affect how much cash a company can retain for equipment, hiring, debt payments, or another investment. Of course, identifying a potential incentive doesn’t guarantee that a business will qualify, but understanding the rules early can help owners and their advisors evaluate the financial consequences of a decision.
That’s one reason specialty tax consulting has continued to expand despite advances in tax software and automation. Software can organize info and streamline calculations, but discerning whether a business qualifies for a complex incentive requires judgment that crosses multiple disciplines.
The profession’s changed dramatically since firms like KBKG opened their doors in the 90s; so has the tax code. What hasn’t is the underlying challenge: incentives only create value when businesses know they exist and know how to claim them correctly. As tax law continues to evolve, helping companies bridge that gap may become just as important as the incentives themselves.
