Benchmarking Insights · Typical Fees Report
What this year's Typical Fees Report is telling us about profitability
For the first time in the many years we've been producing this report, the designation charging the most isn't the most profitable.
After more than fifty years of benchmarking Australian accounting practices, we've learned to pay close attention when the data surprises us. This year it did — and the finding is worth sharing with every practice owner, regardless of which designation sits after your name.
Fees and profitability are moving in different directions
When we look at the three professional designations side by side this year, an interesting pattern emerges. The firms charging the highest fees aren't the firms earning the highest margins.
Across our benchmarked firms, average net profit margins came in as follows:
CPA Firms
38.0%
average profit margin
CA Firms
35.5%
average profit margin
IPA Firms
33.8%
average profit margin
For an equivalent basket of services, CA firms charge 17% more than CPAs and 20% more than IPAs.
CPA firms charge 8% more than IPAs. IPAs, as they consistently have for years, sit at the lower end of the fee scale across almost every service line.
Read those two findings together and the picture sharpens. The designation charging the most isn't the designation keeping the most.
This isn't a one-year anomaly — but it's worth watching carefully
I want to be careful here. One year of data is one year of data, and we'll want to see whether this holds in next year's report before calling it a trend. But it isn't a rounding error, and it isn't explained by a handful of outlier firms. The gap is consistent across firm sizes and service mixes in our sample, and it's the first time in the many years I've been producing this report that the ranking has looked quite like this.
The fee-increase data points in an interesting direction too. Over the past year, firms lifted their charge rates at noticeably different paces by designation:
CA Firms
+3.6%
fee increase
CPA Firms
+3.0%
fee increase
IPA Firms
+1.8%
fee increase
Firms with the highest fees are also lifting them the fastest. Firms with the lowest fees are holding steadier. And the profitability gap between them is wider than the fee gap would suggest.
So what's actually going on
This is where I'd rather ask questions than give you a neat answer, because the honest truth is that a benchmarking report can tell you what is happening without fully explaining why. The question worth sitting with is this:
How are some firms achieving stronger profitability despite charging lower fees?
What we can say from the data is that the profitability differences aren't coming from the top line alone. They're coming from somewhere in how firms are structured and run — which suggests that operational efficiency may now be doing more work than pricing power.
A few possibilities worth sitting with:
Leaner operating models deliver more profit per dollar
Firms that can't rely on premium fees often build sharper processes — better staff leverage, tighter workflows, more considered use of technology. That discipline shows up in the bottom line.
Higher fees can carry higher expectations
Premium charge rates often come with premium delivery — more senior partner involvement per engagement, larger advisory teams, more bespoke work. None of that is wrong, but it is expensive to deliver, and it eats into margin.
Service mix matters as much as designation
The firms in our report are doing meaningfully different blends of compliance, advisory, and specialist work. Profitability follows the mix at least as much as it follows the letters after the principal's name.
None of these on their own is a full explanation, and I'd be suspicious of anyone who offered you one. What the data does suggest is that the old assumption — that higher fees automatically translate to a stronger practice — deserves another look.
What this means for your practice
The useful question this year isn't "which designation is winning." It's the one we always come back to at Rob Knights & Co: what are the firms in the top profitability quartile doing that the bottom quartile isn't?
That question applies whether you're a CA, a CPA, or an IPA. The gap between the most profitable and least profitable firms within each designation is considerably wider than the gap between the designation averages — which means there's more to learn from your own designation's top performers than from cross-designation comparisons.
What this year's data does usefully do is push back on a few assumptions. Charge rates are not a proxy for profitability. Fee increases are not a proxy for margin growth. And the shape of a thriving practice in 2026 looks different to what it did five or ten years ago.
We'll keep watching. And if you'd like to see where your practice sits against these benchmarks, that's exactly what the full report is built for.
Accounting practice profitability, fees and benchmarking in 2026
Which Australian accounting firms are the most profitable in 2026?
According to the 2026 Rob Knights & Co Typical Fees Report, CPA firms recorded the highest average net profit margin at 38.0%, followed by CA firms at 35.5% and IPA firms at 33.8%. The gap between the most and least profitable firms within a single designation is wider than the gap between these designation averages, so your own operational discipline matters more than the letters after your name.
How much do CA firms charge compared with CPA and IPA firms?
For an equivalent basket of compliance services, CA firms charge around 17% more than CPA firms and 20% more than IPA firms. CPA firms, in turn, charge around 8% more than IPA firms. These are averages across our benchmarked firms and will vary by location, practice size and service mix.
Why are some accounting firms more profitable despite charging lower fees?
The data suggests that operational efficiency is now doing more work than pricing power. Firms that can't rely on premium fees tend to build sharper processes — better staff leverage, tighter workflows, more considered use of technology. Higher-fee firms often carry structurally higher delivery costs: more senior partner involvement per engagement, larger advisory teams, more bespoke work. Service mix matters as much as designation.
By how much did accounting firms increase their fees in 2026?
Over the past year, CA firms lifted their charge rates by an average of 3.6%, CPA firms by 3.0%, and IPA firms by 1.8%. The firms with the highest fees are also lifting them the fastest — but the profitability data shows that larger fee increases don't necessarily translate to stronger margins.
What is the Rob Knights & Co Typical Fees Report?
The Typical Fees for Common Services Report is an annual benchmarking report covering minimum, average and maximum charges for compliance services delivered by Australian accounting firms — tax returns, audits, superannuation setup, ASIC returns, FBT returns and more. Data is segmented by location, partner numbers and practice size. It's published each year by Rob Knights & Co, who have been benchmarking the Australian accounting profession since 1974.
How can my firm benchmark its fees and profitability against the market?
The quickest way is to purchase the Typical Fees for Common Services Report or participate in the upcoming June 2026 Charge Rates & Salaries Survey. Participating firms receive a free peer comparison showing how their own data sits against firms of similar size and location, which is considerably more useful than comparing against national averages alone.
Michelle Knights leads Rob Knights & Co, continuing her father's legacy of benchmarking Australian accounting practices since 1974. The firm publishes the only independent reports of their kind in Australia, and has supplied data to the Australian Bureau of Statistics and hundreds of firms each year for over fifty years.
What practices are selling for, and what is moving the numbers
Michelle’s monthly note on practice valuations, buyer activity and the conditions we are seeing across accounting, financial planning and legal firms.
