How accounting firms can offer refund services

For accounting firms with importer clients in their existing book, the post-SCOTUS refund opportunity represents one of the cleanest service line extensions in recent memory. The work fits the discipline. The clients are already trusted. The economics work. And the timing is finite — the window for capturing this work meaningfully is measured in quarters, not years.

This article walks through what offering refund recovery as an accounting service actually looks like, where it fits in a firm's existing practice, and the structural questions that determine whether a firm should build the capability internally or partner for the work it doesn't want to absorb.

Why accounting firms are well positioned

Refund recovery work, particularly the CAPE-eligible portion, sits naturally alongside the work an accounting firm already does for an importer client. The firm typically has access to the client's financial records, an understanding of their supply chain at a high level, and an existing relationship with the CFO or finance leader who controls the engagement decision.

The CFO is the natural decision-maker for refund recovery. Tariff duties are a line item on the books. A potential recovery in the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars is material to the financial picture. The CFO's accounting firm is the existing trusted advisor on financial line items of that scale.

Three structural factors make the fit particularly strong:

Trust is already established. The client is not weighing whether to share their financial information with a new firm — that relationship is already in place. The friction of bringing a refund recovery offering to an existing client is materially lower than for a firm with no prior relationship.

The work pattern is familiar. CAPE filings are documentation-heavy administrative work. Preparing a claim with supporting documentation, submitting it through CBP's process, tracking status, and handling follow-up correspondence are workflow shapes accounting firms execute well.

The fee structure fits how accounting firms charge. Refund recovery work can be priced as a contingent percentage of recovery, on an hourly basis, or as a fixed engagement fee — all of which align with how accounting firms structure other types of advisory work.

What the practice actually looks like

A typical accounting firm refund recovery engagement involves several phases.

The first is exposure identification. Working from the client's customs entry records and shipping documentation, the firm identifies entries that fall within the IEEPA refund window, sorts them by country of origin and tariff rate, and produces an initial estimate of recoverable duties. For firms that don't already have customs expertise on staff, this is the phase that often benefits most from external support — either through a customs broker partner or through an exchange that provides qualification data.

The second is pathway sorting. Not every entry an accounting firm identifies will fit a CAPE filing. Some entries will involve classification questions, multi-tariff layering, or other complications that require recovery counsel rather than accounting work. Clean triage at this stage protects the firm from taking on litigation-grade work outside its scope.

The third is the actual filing work. For CAPE-eligible portions, the firm prepares the claim documentation, submits through the appropriate channels, and manages the administrative process through to refund receipt. This is the core revenue-generating activity for accounting firms in refund recovery.

The fourth is coordination on mixed claims. When the client's situation spans accounting-grade work and counsel-grade work, the accounting firm typically remains the primary client relationship and coordinates with recovery counsel for the legal portion. Many clients prefer this arrangement — they trust their accountant to quarterback the overall recovery while specialist counsel handles the litigation-grade pieces.

The build-or-partner question

The strategic question for any accounting firm considering refund recovery as a service line is whether to build the capability internally or to partner.

Building internally makes sense when the firm has substantial existing customs and trade experience, a client base concentrated in import-heavy industries, and the scale to justify hiring or developing specialized expertise. The internal build has higher fixed costs but captures more of the recovery economics per engagement.

Partnering makes sense when the firm has importer clients but doesn't have deep customs expertise, when the volume of refund work in the client base is meaningful but not enormous, or when the firm wants to offer the service quickly without making a long-term capability investment. Partnership arrangements typically involve sharing the recovery work with a customs broker or recovery attorney, often with the accounting firm retaining the primary client relationship and a portion of the fee.

Most mid-sized accounting firms with importer client bases find that some hybrid of the two approaches works best — building enough internal capability to identify exposure and handle the cleanest filings, while maintaining partnership relationships with specialists for the more complex work.

What Corvant does

Corvant operates as a recovery exchange. We qualify importer situations using AI-assisted analysis across multiple data sources, identify which portions of each claim fit which pathway, and introduce accounting firms to importers with material exposure that fits their service offering. For mixed claims, we coordinate the handoffs across accounting, legal, and factoring partners.

If your accounting firm wants to participate in the exchange, request access.