For US CPA and EA firm owners who sell paid tax planning

Tax planning clients by state

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Short answer

The best planning clients look different in every state. Where there is a state income tax and a pass-through entity election, the meeting is about whether to elect and how to pay. Where there is no personal income tax, the meeting is about federal owner pay, entity choice and the taxes that do apply. Each state page below gives the rules, the market size from Census data and the owners we would book first.

Financial Sales Insider is a marketing company. We fill the calendars of US CPA and EA firms with qualified tax planning meetings, and your firm runs each meeting and decides who to take on. We built these pages because the right owner for a planning meeting in California is a different person from the right owner in Texas, and a firm that knows its state's rules has a better planning meeting.

20 qualified tax planning meetings in 90 days, guaranteed.

Our team contacts and qualifies them so you don't waste time on the wrong leads, then books them on your calendar.

See if your firm is a fit

The federal rule that sets up every state conversation

For 2025, the federal deduction for state and local taxes is capped at $40,000, or $20,000 for married filing separately [1]. The cap shrinks by 30 percent of modified adjusted gross income above $500,000, and it never falls below $10,000 [1]. By our arithmetic, an owner with $600,000 of modified AGI is back at $10,000.

IRS Notice 2020-75 lets a partnership or S corporation deduct income tax it pays to a state at the entity level, and those payments don't count toward each owner's SALT cap [2]. That is why states with an income tax built pass-through entity elections, and why the election is the first planning topic in those states.

The five states in our first batch

State	Personal income tax	Pass-through entity election	One state-specific planning hook	CPA offices (2023)
Texas	None; barred by the state constitution [3]	None	Franchise tax margin method, $2,650,000 no tax due threshold [4]	4,096
California	1% to 12.3%, plus 1% above $1,000,000 [5]	9.3% elective tax, extended through 2030 [6]	June 15 payment, with a 12.5% credit cut if missed from 2026 [6]	7,542
New York	4% to 10.9%, plus New York City tax for city residents [7]	State PTET 6.85% to 10.90%, plus NYC PTET at 3.876% [8][9]	Annual opt-in by March 15, made by the business itself [8]	3,519
Illinois	Flat 4.95% [10]	4.95%, end date removed [11]	Decoupled from federal Section 168(n) bonus depreciation from 2026 [11]	2,229
Florida	None [12]	None	5.5% corporate tax with a $50,000 exemption; commercial rent sales tax ended October 1, 2025 [13][14]	4,664

CPA office counts are from the US Census Bureau's County Business Patterns 2023 [15].

The US market in numbers

County Business Patterns for 2023 counts business locations with paid employees in mid-March 2023 [15]. Self-employed preparers with no staff are not in these figures. Percentages are our arithmetic.

Measure (2023, United States)	Count
Offices of certified public accountants (NAICS 541211)	55,052
People employed in those offices	604,209
CPA offices with fewer than 5 employees	35,650 (65%)
Tax preparation offices (NAICS 541213)	28,762
All business locations with employees	8,361,342
Run by S corporations	3,986,312 (48%)
Run by partnerships	947,508 (11%)
With 10 to 99 employees	2,055,993 (25%)

Two in three CPA offices have fewer than 5 employees. In our view, that makes the owner's own time the limit on how many planning meetings most firms can run.

How to use your state page

Read the short answer at the top of your state's page and check it against the clients you already have.
Use the "steps this quarter" list as a checklist with your team.
Look at the market table to see which owner types are common in your state.
Decide which of those owners you want more of, and write it down as criteria. That list is also what we use if you work with us.

What we count as a qualified meeting

A qualified meeting is one where a business owner we've qualified books onto your calendar and shows up.

You set the criteria in writing before we start, such as owner type, entity, a minimum revenue or profit level, and the states you serve. Existing clients never count. Nothing goes out under your firm's name without your approval.

If you have fewer than 20 qualified meetings after 90 days, we keep booking with no further monthly fee until you reach 20.

$3,000 a month. This is the management fee. Ad spend is separate, and your firm funds it directly. The term is 3 months.

Financial Sales Insider is based in Florida and works with firms across the US.

Why only five states so far

We only publish a state when we have its tax rules, licensing facts and market numbers from official sources, each checked. More states follow in batches once each batch passes our own checks.

Questions firm owners ask

Is my state covered if it isn't listed yet? Yes. We work with CPA and EA firms in every state. The state pages are guides; you don't need one for your state to work with us.

Who runs the planning meeting? You do. We are a marketing company. We find and qualify business owners who want tax planning and put them on your calendar. You run the meeting, make the offer and close the client.

Do you give tax advice? No. Every page here quotes official sources, and the tax advice is your firm's job.

See if your firm is a fit

20 qualified tax planning meetings in 90 days, guaranteed.

Our team contacts and qualifies them so you don't waste time on the wrong leads, then books them on your calendar.

See if your firm is a fit

General information from the official sources listed below, checked October 25, 2026. Not tax or legal advice.

Also on this site

Sources

IRS, Instructions for Schedule A (Form 1040) (2025). https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i1040sca
IRS Notice 2020-75. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-20-75.pdf
Texas Constitution, Article 8, Section 24-a. https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/CN/htm/CN.8.htm
Texas Comptroller, Franchise Tax. https://comptroller.texas.gov/taxes/franchise/
California Franchise Tax Board, 2025 Tax Rate Schedules and 2025 Form 540 booklet. https://www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/2025/2025-540-tax-rate-schedules.pdf and https://www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/2025/2025-540-booklet.pdf
California Franchise Tax Board, Help with pass-through entity elective tax (SB 132 changes) and 2026 Instructions for Form FTB 3893. https://www.ftb.ca.gov/file/business/credits/pass-through-entity-elective-tax/help.html and https://www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/2026/2026-3893-instructions.pdf
New York Tax Department, Instructions for Form IT-201 (2025). https://www.tax.ny.gov/pdf/current_forms/it/it201i.pdf
New York Tax Department, PTET and PTET calculations. https://www.tax.ny.gov/bus/ptet/ and https://www.tax.ny.gov/e-services/ptet/calculations.htm
New York Tax Department, TSB-M-22(1)C, (1)I. https://www.tax.ny.gov/pdf/memos/ptet/m22-1c-1i.pdf
Illinois Department of Revenue, Income Tax Rates. https://tax.illinois.gov/research/taxrates/income.html
Illinois Department of Revenue, FY 2026-15, What's New for Illinois Income Taxes. https://tax.illinois.gov/research/publications/bulletins/fy-2026-15.html
Florida Department of Revenue, personal income tax FAQ. https://floridarevenue.com/faq/Pages/FAQDetails.aspx?FAQID=1466
Florida Department of Revenue, Corporate Income Tax. https://floridarevenue.com/taxes/taxesfees/pages/corporate.aspx
Florida Department of Revenue, TIP 25A01-04. https://www.floridarevenue.com/taxes/tips/Documents/TIP_25A01-04.pdf
US Census Bureau, County Business Patterns 2023. https://www.census.gov/data/datasets/2023/econ/cbp/2023-cbp.html, state file https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/datasets/2023/cbp23st.zip, US file https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/datasets/2023/cbp23us.zip