Who is buying accounting firms

Four buyers, four price logics

Individual buyers: the market for most practices

Accounting Practice Sales, the largest specialist broker, says the best buyer for a practice grossing $2 million or less is an individual: a CPA or Enrolled Agent who wants to own rather than be employed, will pay a fair market price on the seller’s terms, and accepts the transition risk. The marketplace data agrees on scale: BizBuySell carried 665 accounting and tax practices on 22 September 2026, most of them flagged as SBA-loan eligible, and the practices sold there in 2025 had a median price of $500,000. Poe Group Advisors reports that about 15% of its sales go to buyers who bought from it before.

These buyers arrive with bank financing. An SBA 7(a) loan runs to $5 million with a term of up to ten years (twenty-five with real estate) and can be used for a complete or partial change of ownership. Under the SBA’s SOP 50 10 8, in force since 1 June 2025, a complete change of ownership needs a 10% equity injection; a seller note counts toward it only if it is on full standby for the life of the loan and makes up no more than half the injection. Brokers describe the resulting stack as 70–90% bank loan, 10–15% buyer cash, and an optional 10–20% seller note; lenders take about 60 days. The practical effect for a seller is that a deal with an individual buyer usually closes for cash, with the retention risk on the buyer and the bank.

Existing firms buying nearby practices

The second buyer APS names is the small practice owner who wants to take it to the next level. A firm that already has staff, software, and an office can fold an acquired client list into its own operation, which is why California broker cards note the net margin “when the practice is relocated to the buyer’s office.” Lenders treat these buyers differently: Poe reports that strong buyers who already own a firm can finance with 0% injection, and Live Oak Bank is reported to lend up to 100% of the price on expansion acquisitions. Larger local firms are, in APS’s words, only marginally motivated and almost always insist on a client retention agreement; the price they offer looks higher and pays out over years.

Private-equity platforms

Private equity entered the top of the profession in 2021 and has worked its way down. Every deal below uses an alternative practice structure, in which the licensed CPA firm keeps attest work and an investor-owned advisory entity takes tax and consulting, because state accountancy rules do not allow non-CPA ownership of a firm that signs audit opinions.

Below the top 100, the platforms buy the way a local firm does, only faster: majority stakes in firms with a few million dollars of revenue, a management layer, and recurring work, paid in cash plus rollover equity. Naab Consulting quotes private-equity-backed deals at up to 2× revenue for strategic acquisitions (claimed); advisor frameworks put platform pricing at 4–7× adjusted EBITDA, which for a firm with a 25% margin is the same as 1–1.75× revenue. The tracker data on how many such deals close each year sits behind CPA Trendlines’ paywall and could not be checked.

AI-backed roll-ups

A newer buyer type buys firms in order to rebuild their delivery around software. Multiplier, founded in San Francisco by a former Stripe executive, raised $27.5 million from Lightspeed and Ribbit in June 2025 to buy tax and accounting firms and run them on its own AI; its first acquisition was an international tax practice. Modus, in New York, raised $85 million led by Lightspeed in April 2026 to invest in audit-first firms. Crete Professionals Alliance announced a $500 million acquisition program with Thrive Capital and OpenAI tooling in 2025. These buyers want firms with process-heavy compliance work and staff who stay, and they buy majority stakes rather than client lists. Accrual, sometimes mentioned in the same breath, is software, not a buyer.

What it means for a seller in California, Florida, Michigan, or Delaware

The buyer pool for a one-owner practice is local, and it is large. Census County Business Patterns for 2023 count 18,655 accounting, tax, bookkeeping, and payroll establishments with employees in California, 12,917 in Florida, 3,472 in Michigan, and 386 in Delaware; the CPA offices among them number 7,542, 4,664, 1,349, and 142. The directory behind this site lists the ones with a website and a public review record, by city, which is a workable map of who might buy: see accountants in California or accountants in Florida.

Platform buyers are present in California in particular: Platform Accounting Group has acquired eighteen California firms, and Ascend’s Los Angeles-area firms have absorbed neighbours. For a practice of a few million dollars with a team, that is a second set of bidders; for a practice under $2 million it is not, and the realistic path is an individual or local-firm buyer at the multiples in the valuation guide.

Why there are more sellers than there used to be

The often-quoted figure that 75% of CPAs will retire within fifteen years is attributed to the AICPA but has no locatable primary source; the earliest citations are from 2017 and 2018, and it should not be repeated as current data. What can be sourced is older and narrower: the 2014 GAA/AICPA succession survey found about half of US firms expected to lose at least one partner to retirement within five years, and the Rosenberg survey reported in 2018 that 65.5% of partners in $2–10 million firms and 71.1% in smaller firms were over fifty. Broker claims that it is a seller’s market (APS, Naab) and a buyer’s market (Berkshire) coexist; the sold data shows prices near 1× revenue throughout 2021–2025.

Practical reading