Gary, so I think I get your perspective, but if we buy into the philosophy of value billing, we don’t focus on the time required when we set the price. We look at what the market price is… and at the value we create for clients… and from these data points, we create a standard price.

I totally acknowledge, that a “standard price” won’t be perfect. But if you or I have, e.g., 50 returns that all sort of look the same (client uses organizer, wants an interview, requires a Sch A because of mortgage, requires a Sch D but that only has a few transactions, etc.) we can probably pretty quickly determine the typical time required and then use that data and our other costs make sure our standard price creates reasonable margins.

Let me also say that for any “one-offs” using value pricing is really tricky because while we may know the market price or the value to the client, we won’t necessarily have a good handle on our costs and time. And I think this is an issue you point to (very correctly) in your comment.