Staxiom vs. Strike Tax
Strike Tax Advisory is a specialist firm that does one thing: finds and documents the R&D tax credit, then hands it back to your accountant to file. It doesn't do your bookkeeping or your tax return.
20% contingency fee on the credit delivered — no upfront cost, no retainer, nothing owed if they don't find a credit. That's below the 25–40% range industry sources cite as typical for contingency-fee R&D credit firms.
Strike's fee scales with the size of the credit they find, which aligns their incentive with maximizing your credit — but it also means the fee grows with your credit rather than staying fixed. Staxiom charges a flat fee regardless of what the R&D credit comes to, since it's found as part of bookkeeping and tax prep you're already paying for, not sold as a separate percentage-of-refund engagement.
Strike's engagement is the R&D credit study itself — a real, useful service, but a separate relationship from whoever does your monthly bookkeeping and tax return. Staxiom's credit review happens inside the same relationship that's already keeping your books diligence-grade year-round, so there's one fewer vendor and one fewer handoff between your books and your return.
Strike Shield's unlimited audit defense and fee-back guarantee are real, concrete commitments — a fair comparison shouldn't pretend otherwise.
Sources: Strike Tax Advisory — homepage; Swanson Reed — standard contingency fee for R&D tax credit advisors. Pricing and terms are Strike Tax's own, published on their sites — confirm current terms directly with them before deciding, since pricing changes over time.
Add your revenue and website for a full diligence brief, reviewed by a CPA who ran EY's West Coast R&D Tax Credit practice for 13 years.