What the Grant Thornton–CBIZ Acquisition Says About the Future of R&D Tax Credits

The accounting profession continues its rapid transformation through consolidation.

Grant Thornton recently announced its acquisition of CBIZ, a transaction valued at approximately $5 billion and backed by New Mountain Capital. The combined organization will become the fifth-largest accounting and advisory organization in the United States. The transaction reflects a broader trend reshaping the profession:  firms are pursuing scale, expanding advisory capabilities, investing heavily in technology, and seeking operational efficiencies through integration.

For many businesses that rely on the R&D tax credit, the announcement presents an important strategic consideration:

As accounting firms expand through consolidation, who is actually focused on your R&D tax credit?

Bigger Firms, Bigger Priorities

Large accounting firms have always offered broad service lines. Today, they’re also under increasing pressure to integrate acquisitions, improve profitability, invest in AI, and target return on investments.

Artificial intelligence is becoming a critical part of tax operations. Automated tools can help organize documentation, analyze large datasets, identify inconsistencies, and improve overall efficiency. Those are valuable advancements and increasingly necessary.

However, the R&D tax credit remains fundamentally different from many other tax functions because its success depends on understanding how innovation occurs within a business. Ultimately, technology cannot independently conduct technical conversations with engineers, evaluate the qualification of research activities, or exercise the professional judgment required to support a defensible position during an IRS examination.

The Risk of Scale

Consolidation often creates efficiencies. It can also create distance.

As organizations grow, standardization often follows. Processes become increasingly dependent on uniform methodologies. Client interactions become more structured. Decisions are influenced by enterprise-wide technology platforms, utilization metrics, and operational priorities.

For companies claiming the R&D tax credit, that’s worth considering.

The quality of an R&D tax credit study is often determined by how effectively those differences are identified, documented, and substantiated. A one-size-fits-all process rarely identifies every qualified business component or produces the strongest contemporaneous, audit-ready documentation.

Why MASSIE Chose a Different Path

MASSIE was built around a different philosophy.

Instead of becoming another multidisciplinary accounting firm, we chose to remain focused on one thing: the R&D tax credit.

Our team consists exclusively of professionals who specialize in research credits. Many built their careers at some of the nation’s largest accounting firms before deciding they wanted to spend their time solving R&D tax credit challenges. Their background provides a unique perspective on both the advantages and limitation of large-scale service models

That experience matters.

Specialization allows us to devote our full attention to one objective: helping clients maximize, document, and defend their research credits.

Technology Is an Enhancer, Not a Substitute

At MASSIE, we embrace AI and automation.

We use technology to streamline collaboration, reduce administrative work, improve documentation, and make the R&D tax credit process easier for tax departments and subject matter experts.

Yet technology is only one component of the process.

The most effective R&D tax credit studies continue to be built through collaboration between experienced tax professionals and the engineers, scientists, developers, and technical employees who perform qualified research every day. The value is created not simply through data collection, but through interpretation, technical understanding, and professional judgment.

Those capabilities remain difficult to replicate through scale alone.

As the accounting industry continues to consolidate and private equity reshapes many of the nation’s largest firms, companies should ask a simple question:

Do you want an R&D tax credit practice that is one of many service offerings, or a team whose sole focus is helping clients maximize, substantiate and defend their R&D tax credit?

At MASSIE,  we believe focused expertise remains the most valuable differentiator in an increasingly consolidated marketplace. That’s exactly why we’ve chosen to remain dedicated specialists, and why our clients continue to value a partner whose entire business is built around the R&D tax credit.

Peter Green

As MASSIE’s CEO, Peter is responsible for the company’s growth and client experience initiatives that make the R&D tax credit process easier, generating larger credits and ensuring smoother audits. His innovative strategies at MASSIE, ...