How much does an accountant cost in Australia?
Most firms make you book a meeting to find out. This page is the straight answer: what accountants across the Australian market charge, from budget online lodgers to top-tier city firms, and what actually drives your number up or down. It is a guide to reading a quote - so that when you get one, you know whether it is fair.
Updated July 2026 · Indicative Australian market ranges
These are market ranges, not LINK's prices.
Everything below is what the Australian market charges, gathered so you can make sense of a quote. It spans franchise tax shops, online lodgers, solo suburban practitioners and city firms, so the bottom of every band belongs to a business model that is not ours. We do not do $150 tax returns and never have. Our actual fees are published on their own page, with an estimator that gives you a real number in two minutes.
What the market charges, service by service.
Again: this is the market, not us. Each range spans very different businesses selling very different things under the same job title - the low end is a lodgement service, the high end is advice. What you should take from it is which end a quote you have been given sits at, and what that end usually buys.
Individual tax return
$150 - $400
Simple salary returns sit at the bottom; add rental properties, capital gains or side income and most firms charge toward the top.
Sole trader return
$300 - $800
A business schedule, depreciation and home-office claims take real work. Cheap online lodgers exist, but they lodge what you give them rather than finding what you missed.
Company or trust: annual accounts + return
$1,500 - $5,000 / year
The wide range reflects complexity: a single-entity company with clean Xero sits low, multi-entity structures with inter-entity loans sit high.
Quarterly BAS lodgement
$150 - $500 / quarter
Depends almost entirely on the state of your bookkeeping when it lands on the accountant's desk.
Bookkeeping
$300 - $800+ / month
Driven by transaction volume, payroll headcount and how much cleanup is involved. Good bookkeeping usually pays for itself in accountant time saved.
Ongoing accounting package
$250 - $1,000+ / month
The model we run: compliance, advice and access rolled into one agreed monthly fee. What you pay should track the size and complexity of your business, and you should know the number before the month starts.
Business structure setup or restructure
$1,000 - $3,000+
Company and trust establishment, ASIC and legal costs on top. Worth doing properly once rather than cheaply twice.
None of the figures above are ours. Want our number instead? The fee estimator gives you an indicative monthly band in two minutes, and the one-off jobs are priced on the same page.
Cheap and expensive are the wrong words.
An accountant who costs $3,000 a year and finds you $15,000 in legitimate tax savings is cheap. An accountant who costs $800 and finds you nothing is expensive. Price only makes sense next to what you get for it: proactive planning before 30 June, a structure that fits, clean numbers you can act on, and answers when you need them.
You only hear from your accountant once a year, and the contact is an invoice.
Every phone call shows up as a line item on the next bill.
The fee is a surprise every single time.
You are paying business-package money for what is, underneath, a tax return.
Questions take weeks to answer, or the answers raise more questions.
Your accountant has never once suggested a way to pay less tax.
Tick two or more of those and you are due for a better deal. Switching takes less effort than you think - we do the heavy lifting.
Where LINK sits, and why.
Middle of the market to a little above it, deliberately. We are not the cheapest quote you will get and we do not try to be - but we are also not carrying the overhead that puts the top of these ranges where it is. Here is exactly what that means, so you can decide whether it is the trade you want.
Not the bottom of the market
The cheap end of every band is a lodgement service: you send documents, someone processes what you sent, and nobody goes looking for what you missed. It is a fine product if compliance is genuinely all you need. It is an expensive product if a structure decision, a tax planning session or one good question would have been worth multiples of the saving.
Not the top either
The top of these ranges is largely overhead - layers of management, city-tower rent and a partner margin that has to be fed. You are paying for the firm as much as the work. We are a Brisbane practice with the seniority in the room rather than three levels above it, and our pricing reflects that we do not have that structure to fund.
The trade in the middle
A fixed monthly fee agreed before we start, covering compliance, tax planning before 30 June, and genuinely unlimited access to your advisor - no clock, no per-call charge, no hesitating before you ring. You pay more than the cheapest quote and you get an accountant who is in the business with you all year.
The honest test of whether that trade is worth it is not the fee, it is what the fee returns. An accountant who costs $3,000 a year and finds you $15,000 in legitimate tax savings is cheap. It is also why 510+ businesses rate us 4.9 stars, and why almost every one of them came from somewhere else.
One thing the bands above do not cover: senior financial help is priced on a different scale to compliance. What a virtual CFO costs is published on its own page, for the same reason this one exists — nobody else in the market puts a number on it.
Frequently asked questions.
How much does an accountant cost per hour in Australia?
Hourly rates typically run $150 to $400+ depending on seniority: bookkeepers at the lower end, partners and specialist advisors at the top. Many firms, ours included, have moved away from hourly billing entirely because it punishes you for calling. A fixed monthly fee means the meter is never running.
Is a fixed monthly fee better than paying by the hour?
For an operating business, usually yes. You can budget for it, you are never afraid to pick up the phone, and the accountant is motivated to be efficient rather than slow. The one check to make: confirm exactly what the fixed fee includes so 'unlimited' means exactly that.
Why do accountant prices vary so much?
Complexity, quality and business model. A franchise tax shop, a solo suburban accountant and a Chartered Accounting firm are selling different products: lodgement, familiarity and advice respectively. The right question is not 'what is cheapest' but 'what does the fee get me' - proactive tax planning routinely returns multiples of what it costs.
What should be included in a monthly accounting package?
At minimum: annual accounts and tax returns, BAS, tax planning before 30 June, and genuine access to your accountant without per-call charges. Stronger packages add bookkeeping, payroll support and regular check-ins. If a package is only compliance, you are buying paperwork, not advice.
Are accounting fees tax deductible?
Yes. Fees for managing your tax affairs and running your business accounts are generally deductible, which softens the real cost of good advice. Your accountant should be pointing this out without being asked.
Are the ranges on this page what LINK charges?
No. This page is a survey of the Australian market, put together so you can read a quote and know whether it is fair. It spans budget online lodgers at one end and top-tier city firms at the other, and neither end is us - we sit in the middle to a little above it. Our own prices, including the one-off jobs, are published at https://www.linkadvisors.com.au/fees with an estimator that gives you an indicative monthly band in two minutes.
Two minutes to your indicative fee.
Run the estimator, then put the number to us. The first chat costs nothing.
Or call 07 3899 8311.