Tax Consultant Monthly Retainer Cost in Pakistan

Kamboh Associates doesn't sell a single fixed "monthly retainer" package — but a lot of businesses effectively end up paying one anyway, once you add together the recurring services a registered company actually needs every month. This page adds up what that real monthly total looks like, and when a formal bundled retainer would actually save money over paying a la carte.

Why There's No Single "Retainer" Price

A retainer implies one flat monthly fee covering a defined bundle of ongoing work — but which recurring services a business actually needs varies enormously. A small sole proprietorship with no sales tax registration and no employees has essentially zero monthly compliance obligation between annual returns. A registered Pvt Ltd company with sales tax registration and a handful of employees has several distinct recurring filings running in parallel every month. Selling both of these the same flat "retainer" price would be dishonest pricing in one direction or the other.

Instead, the real monthly cost is the sum of whichever specific recurring services actually apply to your business — which this page adds up transparently below.

Building Up the Real Monthly Cost

A company with all three registered obligations (sales tax, WHT, EOBI) but no separate bookkeeping service is looking at roughly Rs. 7,500/month in pure recurring compliance filing — before adding bookkeeping or the annual corporate return.

Three Realistic Scenarios

• Freelancer, no company, no sales tax registration: Effectively zero monthly recurring cost — just the annual return (Rs. 5,000) once a year.
• Small registered Pvt Ltd company, sales tax registered, 2-3 employees: Roughly Rs. 7,500-8,000/month (sales tax + WHT + EOBI), plus the annual corporate return (Rs. 18,000+) and SECP annual return.
• Growing company with sales tax, employees, and no internal bookkeeping: The above Rs. 7,500-8,000/month plus a bookkeeping quote based on transaction volume — commonly bringing the realistic monthly total to Rs. 12,000-15,000+ depending on scale.

This is why a generic "how much is a retainer" question doesn't have one honest answer — it depends entirely on which of these situations actually describes your business.

Does a Bundled Retainer Actually Save Money?

For a business needing several of these recurring services simultaneously — sales tax, WHT, and EOBI filing together, for example — there is efficiency in having one consultant handle all of it in a coordinated way rather than juggling separate providers, even if the underlying per-service pricing is the same either way. The saving isn't usually in a discounted bundle rate; it's in avoiding the coordination overhead and error risk of multiple parties each handling one piece without visibility into the others (a WHT filing that doesn't account for a sales-tax-registered transaction correctly, for instance).

If your business needs three or more of these recurring services, it's worth asking directly whether a coordinated monthly arrangement makes sense for your specific mix — rather than assuming a "retainer" is automatically cheaper or automatically a marketing gimmick.

What Shouldn't Be Part of a Monthly Fee

Be cautious of a "retainer" that bundles in things that aren't actually recurring — a one-time NTN or company registration shouldn't be amortized into a monthly fee that continues indefinitely after that one-time work is done. Similarly, an FBR notice response or audit representation is case-specific work, not a predictable monthly cost, and shouldn't be folded into a flat retainer that implies it's routine. A transparent monthly arrangement should only include services that are genuinely recurring every month by their nature.

Getting Your Actual Monthly Total

1. WhatsApp which registrations your business currently has — sales tax (STRN), EOBI, and employee count — to 0328-4675162
2. Tell us if you currently have any bookkeeping in place or need it built from scratch
3. We add up exactly which recurring services apply to your specific situation
4. You receive a real monthly total, itemized by service, not a generic bundle number
5. We coordinate all recurring filings on your behalf going forward, on their respective monthly deadlines

How to Check Which Registrations Your Business Already Has

Before you can know your real monthly cost, you need an accurate picture of what's actually registered — not what you assume is registered:

• NTN status — check via FBR's IRIS portal or ask us to verify against your CNIC/business name
• Sales tax registration — confirm whether an STRN was ever issued, since some businesses register early in their life and then forget, continuing (or failing to continue) monthly filing without a clear owner tracking it
• EOBI registration — particularly relevant if the business has grown its employee count since it was founded, since the threshold may now apply when it didn't originally
• SECP company status — confirm the company is in good standing with SECP's annual return filing, separate from FBR obligations

A surprising number of businesses discover during this check that they're either paying for a registration they no longer need, or missing one they should have had for months.

Revisiting Your Monthly Total as Your Business Changes

A business's real monthly compliance cost isn't fixed forever the day it's first calculated — it shifts as the underlying business shifts. Crossing the sales tax threshold adds Rs. 3,000/month that wasn't there before. Hiring a fourth employee that pushes past the EOBI threshold adds another Rs. 2,000/month. Conversely, a business that scales back, changes structure, or formally closes a registration it no longer needs should see its monthly total come down correspondingly — but only if that change is actively identified and acted on, not assumed to happen automatically.

A useful habit is revisiting this itemized breakdown roughly once a year, alongside annual return filing, rather than only when a new registration is first triggered — this catches both the "we should register for X now" cases and, just as usefully, the "we're still paying for Y and don't actually need it anymore" cases, which are easy to miss once a monthly filing becomes routine and stops getting a second look.

A Worked Example: Adding Up a Small Company's Real Monthly Cost

A small Pvt Ltd company with four employees, sales tax registration, and EOBI registration wants to know its actual monthly compliance cost rather than guessing. The itemized total: Rs. 3,000 for the monthly sales tax return, Rs. 2,500 for the monthly withholding tax statement (since the company deducts tax on employee salaries and some supplier payments), and Rs. 2,000 for EOBI contribution filing — Rs. 7,500 per month in pure recurring filing. The company doesn't currently have bookkeeping in place, so a separate quote is given for that based on its actual transaction volume, bringing the realistic all-in monthly figure to roughly Rs. 11,000-12,000 once bookkeeping is added — plus the annual corporate return (Rs. 18,000+) and SECP annual return as yearly, not monthly, costs. Seeing the number broken down this way, rather than as one opaque "retainer" figure, lets the company owner see exactly which piece would change if they, for example, deregistered from sales tax or reduced headcount below the EOBI threshold.

Common Mistakes in Managing Monthly Compliance

• Not knowing which registrations are currently active — leads directly to either paying for unnecessary filings or missing required ones.
• Treating each recurring filing as a separate, uncoordinated task — increases the risk that one filing (like withholding tax) doesn't correctly account for information relevant to another (like sales tax), especially when handled by different people.
• Budgeting only for the "headline" services (sales tax, income tax) while forgetting EOBI or SECP annual compliance — these smaller recurring obligations add up and are easy to overlook.
• Assuming a "retainer" automatically includes everything — without confirming exactly what's covered, a business can be caught off guard when a case-specific service (like notice response) turns out not to be included.
• Not revisiting the monthly total as the business grows — a company's recurring obligations change as it adds employees, crosses the sales tax threshold, or grows transaction volume; a monthly cost calculated at founding may be badly outdated a year or two later.

Frequently Asked Questions