How Boast Compares to Other R&D Tax Credit Providers
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Tech-Only Platforms (Neo.Tax, MainStreet) | Traditional Consultants | Big 6 Firms (Deloitte, PwC, EY, KPMG, BDO, Grant Thornton) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Client Time Commitment | ~5 hours | Variable (self-service) | >40 hours | >40 hours |
| Cost | $$ | $ | $$$ | $$$$ |
| Audit Risk & Liability | Low | High | Medium | Medium |
| Manual Preparation Process | No | No | ||
| In-house Technical & Tax Experts | ~ | ~ | ||
| AI-Powered Platform | ||||
| Audit Defense Included | ~ | |||
| Federal & Multi-State Expertise | ~ | ~ | ||
| Secure Document Vault | ~ | |||
| Financial System Integration | ~ | |||
| Engineering Tool Integration | ~ | |||
| Automated Time Tracking | ~ | |||
| Automated Audit Documentation | ||||
| Year-Round Platform Access | ||||
| Real-Time Credit Tracking | ~ | |||
| Mid-Market & Enterprise Focus | ~ |
Boast vs. Big 6 Accounting Firms
The Big 6 Approach to R&D Tax Credits
Big 6 accounting firms (Deloitte, PwC, EY, KPMG, BDO, and Grant Thornton) approach R&D tax credits as one service line within their vast portfolio of offerings. While these firms have strong brand recognition and broad capabilities, their R&D credit practice often suffers from several key limitations:
Lack of Specialization
R&D credits represent a tiny fraction of Big 6 service offerings. Partners and senior staff focus on audit, tax planning, M&A advisory, and other high-revenue services. R&D credit work is often delegated to junior staff with limited specialized expertise, resulting in missed qualifying activities and suboptimal credit calculations.
Manual, Time-Intensive Processes
Big 6 firms rely almost entirely on manual processes—extensive interviews, document reviews, spreadsheet-based calculations—requiring 60+ hours of client time commitment. These firms lack the AI-powered platforms that enable efficient data collection and analysis, making their processes slow, expensive, and prone to human error.
Premium Hourly Pricing
Big 6 firms charge premium rates for R&D credit services, typically billing by the hour with limited transparency around total costs. Mid-market companies often face $50,000-$150,000+ in fees for comprehensive federal and state credit studies—with audit defense billed separately at similar hourly rates if the IRS challenges claims.
Enterprise Focus
Big 6 firms primarily target Fortune 500 and large enterprise clients, providing limited attention to mid-market companies ($25M-$500M revenue). Smaller clients often receive standardized approaches rather than customized strategies optimized for their specific situations.
How Boast Beats Big 6 Firms
Deep R&D Credit Specialization
Unlike Big 6 generalists, Boast focuses exclusively on R&D tax credits. Our entire organization—from AI platform development to technical specialists to tax professionals—dedicates 100% of attention to maximizing innovation funding. This specialization translates to deeper expertise, better results, and higher credit values.
AI-Powered Efficiency
Boast’s platform automates data collection from financial systems, project management tools, and engineering platforms. This automation reduces client time commitment from 60+ hours to approximately 5 hours while improving accuracy by eliminating manual data entry errors. Our technology provides the efficiency Big 6 firms can’t match with their manual processes.
Transparent Value-Based Pricing
Boast charges based on credit value delivered, not hours spent. Clients know costs upfront without surprise invoices or scope creep. Our pricing typically runs 40-60% lower than Big 6 firms while delivering 30-50% higher credit values—providing dramatically better ROI.
Mid-Market Focus
Boast specializes in serving growth-stage and mid-market companies ($5M-$500M revenue), providing the same level of expertise and attention whether you’re $10M or $300M in revenue. Our platform and service model scale efficiently without the minimum engagement sizes that Big 6 firms often require.
Included Audit Defense
Unlike Big 6 firms that charge separately for audit representation, Boast includes comprehensive audit defense through our AuditShield program in every engagement. Clients never pay additional fees if the IRS examines their claims—we stand behind our work with included representation.
Real Results: Big 6 to Boast Migrations
Companies switching from Big 6 firms to Boast typically experience:
Boast vs. Tech-Only Platforms
How Tech-Only Platforms Approach R&D Tax Credits
Pure software platforms like Neo.Tax, MainStreet, Clarus R+D, and others promise low-cost, automated R&D credit solutions powered by AI and machine learning. While these platforms offer convenience and attractive pricing, their automated-only approach creates significant limitations:
Shallow Documentation
Tech platforms collect basic data and generate standardized documentation, but lack the depth and technical detail that IRS audits require. Their algorithms can’t understand contextual nuances, explain complex technological uncertainties, or articulate systematic experimentation processes in ways that satisfy examining agents.
Missed Qualifying Activities
Automated systems miss 25-40% of qualifying R&D activities on average. They can’t identify subtle process improvements, recognize indirect qualifying expenses, or understand industry-specific qualification opportunities that human experts immediately recognize. This means significantly lower credit values despite seemingly comprehensive data collection.
No Audit Defense
When the IRS challenges automated platform claims, these providers typically disappear. Their service agreements explicitly disclaim audit representation, leaving clients to defend claims alone with inadequate documentation. The cost of failed audits far exceeds any savings from discount software pricing.
Startup-Focused Limitations
Most tech platforms target early-stage startups leveraging the PATH Act payroll tax offset, with limited capability to handle mid-market complexity. They struggle with multi-state operations, complex organizational structures, sophisticated cost allocation, and enterprise-scale data volumes.
Black Box Algorithms
Users can’t see how tech platforms make qualification decisions or understand the reasoning behind credit calculations. This opacity creates audit risk when IRS examiners question methodology and the platform can’t explain its own determinations.
How Boast Beats Tech-Only Platforms
Technology + Expertise Hybrid
Boast combines AI-powered automation for efficient data collection with hands-on review by technical specialists and tax professionals. Every claim receives expert optimization that identifies opportunities automated systems miss, while maintaining the efficiency advantages of platform technology.
Comprehensive Audit Defense
Unlike tech platforms that abandon clients, Boast includes full audit representation through AuditShield in every engagement. Our 95%+ audit success rate and 90%+ recovery rate demonstrate the quality of our documentation and expert defense capabilities.
Mid-Market & Enterprise Capability
Boast’s platform handles complex scenarios that defeat pure software solutions—multi-state operations, sophisticated cost allocations, complex entity structures, and large-scale data volumes. Our technology scales efficiently while maintaining audit-quality documentation.
Transparent Methodology
Clients understand exactly how we identify qualifying activities, calculate credit values, and build documentation. Our experts explain decisions, provide strategic guidance, and ensure clients can confidently answer IRS questions about their claims.
Strategic Value Beyond Claims
Boast provides year-round strategic planning, regulatory update notifications, optimization recommendations, and proactive audit readiness reviews—not just annual claim preparation. This ongoing partnership delivers continuous value that tech platforms can’t provide.
Real Results: Tech Platform to Boast Migrations
Companies switching from tech-only platforms to Boast typically experience:
Boast vs. Traditional Tax Consultants
How Traditional Consultants Approach R&D Tax Credits
Generic tax consultants and small/regional CPA firms often offer R&D credit services as an ancillary offering alongside their core tax preparation and advisory services. While these consultants provide personalized service, their approach has significant limitations:
Limited R&D Expertise
Traditional consultants handle diverse tax matters—individual returns, business tax planning, estate planning, audit representation for general issues—with R&D credits representing a small portion of their practice. This limited specialization means missed opportunities and suboptimal strategies.
Entirely Manual Processes
Without platform technology, traditional consultants rely on extensive interviews, manual document reviews, and spreadsheet-based calculations. These manual processes require massive client time commitments (60+ hours) and create risks of human error, missed activities, and inconsistent documentation quality.
Project-Based Relationships
Traditional consultants typically engage on annual project basis, providing no year-round support, continuous monitoring, or proactive strategic guidance. Each year starts from scratch rather than building on institutional knowledge about your R&D operations.
Variable Audit Support
Many traditional consultants provide basic documentation but lack deep IRS audit defense experience. When claims are examined, clients may face separately billed representation costs or need to engage specialized audit defense attorneys—adding significant expense and complexity.
Scalability Limitations
As businesses grow and R&D operations become more complex, traditional consultants struggle to scale their manual processes efficiently. Handling multi-state operations, large employee populations, and diverse project portfolios becomes increasingly time-intensive and expensive.
How Boast Beats Traditional Consultants
Exclusive R&D Specialization
R&D tax credits are all we do. Our entire team—technical specialists, tax professionals, platform developers—focuses exclusively on maximizing innovation funding. This deep specialization delivers insights and strategies that generalist consultants simply can’t provide.
Technology-Enabled Efficiency
Boast’s AI platform automates data collection, activity identification, and documentation generation—reducing client time from 60+ hours to 5 hours while improving accuracy and consistency. Our technology provides efficiency advantages traditional consultants can’t match.
Year-Round Partnership
Boast provides continuous platform access, proactive monitoring of qualifying activities, regular strategic planning sessions, and ongoing optimization recommendations. This year-round engagement delivers exponentially more value than annual project relationships.
Comprehensive Audit Defense
All Boast engagements include full audit representation through AuditShield at no additional cost. Our team has defended hundreds of IRS examinations with 95%+ success rates—experience and results that traditional consultants rarely match.
Built for Growth
Boast’s platform scales seamlessly as businesses grow from $5M to $50M to $500M+ in revenue. Increasing complexity doesn’t require proportional increases in client time or service costs—the technology handles scale efficiently.
Real Results: Traditional Consultant to Boast Migrations
Companies switching from traditional consultants to Boast typically experience:
As seen in
Why more than 2,000 companies made the switch to Boast
Higher Returns
Average 3x more credit value than tech–only platforms, 30–50% more than Big 6 firms
Effortless Process
~5 hours of client time vs. 60+ hours with traditional consultants
Less Time Commitment
AI–powered automation handles data collection while experts optimize results
Easier Future Claims
Year–over–year improvement as platform learns your R&D operations
How Boast Approaches R&D Tax Credit Claims
Our team leaves no stone unturned when compiling your federal and state R&D tax credit claims, digging deeper to uncover all of your qualifying activities. We combine decades of specialized expertise in navigating IRS requirements and state-specific programs—while also being technologists in our own right—with an AI-powered platform that synchronizes key financial, project workflow, and payroll data into a single system of audit-proof evidence.
