What does a PFIC accountant cost?

The honest answer is that it depends far more on your holdings than on the firm. A US expat return with no foreign funds is a fairly standard job. Add PFICs and the pricing model changes, because the work changes: each fund is a separate computation with its own election, its own holding-period allocation and its own form.

Why PFIC work is billed per form

Much of the labour on a PFIC return is per-fund analysis. For each relevant PFIC a preparer may need to establish the acquisition date and cost basis, determine the applicable treatment (QEF, mark-to-market, or the §1291 default), allocate an excess distribution or gain across the holding period, compute the deferred tax and interest charge, and prepare Form 8621. That work often does not compress across funds, which is why quotes can scale with the portfolio.

What actually drives your number

• How many PFICs you hold. The dominant factor. Four UCITS ETFs generally means four forms per year, not one.
• How many years. A catch-up filing multiplies everything by the number of years in scope — this is where costs escalate most sharply.
• Whether you have basis and acquisition dates. Missing data is manual reconstruction work, and it is the most common reason a quote comes back higher than expected.
• Which election you make. Mark-to-market is generally the lighter computation; a §1291 excess-distribution allocation across a long holding period is heavier.
• Whether you sold or received distributions. A year with a disposition or a large distribution carries far more computation than a quiet holding year.

How to bring the cost down before you ask for a quote

1. Export the annual positions statement with ISINs from each broker, for every year in scope.
2. Separate US-domiciled holdings from non-US ones — US ETFs are not PFICs and should never be billed as such.
3. Recover acquisition dates and cost basis now, while you can still reach old statements and support desks.
4. Count your actual Form 8621 workload so you can sanity-check any quote you receive against a per-form rate.

Where Atamatax fits

Atamatax uses the configured PFIC · $499 product rather than adding a price for every form: it includes up to 25 Form 8621 drafts, with supported classification inputs and the §1291 computation handled by the engine. What you receive is a reviewable draft package — official Form 8621 PDFs plus mapped 1040 and schedule worksheets — which you or your CPA review and file. It is software, not a CPA firm, and it does not e-file. For unusual facts, a professional opinion may be the right purchase, and the CPA export can provide organised worksheets for that engagement.