Grimes brings tax prep in-house as mid-sized RIAs chase retention

Grimes & Company, the Westborough, Massachusetts RIA managing about $7 billion, said Tuesday it acquired the tax practice of Stevens and Ciccone Associates, PC, a Needham shop adding about 800 tax clients and giving the firm an in-house tax capability to sit alongside its financial planning and investment management; the practice will continue as S&C Tax Advisors.

CEO Kevin Grimes, son of founder Timothy Grimes, said the firm had been considering a tax acquisition for about a year and chose S&C because it is a second-generation team with a long runway and a desire to build something new in the wealth space. Grimes was explicit that the acquisition will not displace advisors' outside tax relationships: "For us, it's not one or the other," he said. "Our advisors certainly have their networks with their tax professionals and other professionals, and that is a very powerful thing to have."

The acquisition came with a new operating role: Andrew Hamil was named chief operating officer to oversee financial planning, insurance, tax, business operations, data and artificial intelligence, and growth teams, with a mandate to target further acquisitions and expand trust services. Hamil described the build-out as an opportunity to better serve clients while building an operational foundation for thoughtful, long-term growth.

Grimes sold a minority investment to Rise Growth Partners, Joe Duran's RIA investor, in early 2025, and Duran called the tax expansion and the Hamil hire meaningful investments in the firm's future. Fidelity's midyear data puts private equity behind 89% of deals, with a median target of $630 million—a cycle of fewer, bigger transactions in which Grimes is using its capital to buy a capability rather than scale.

Grimes is not alone. Sowell Management, the $6.9 billion RIA backed by Merchant, launched a division offering tax, estate, and planning the same week; Sowell's Advanced Planning Group is meant to anchor its Cache River Private Wealth division for households with $5 million or more. Two mid-sized RIAs with private capital behind them are drawing the same conclusion: the tax office belongs inside the RIA.

The case for an in-house tax desk is retention as much as revenue: a client with an in-house preparer has one firm answering the questions that surface in any given year—estimated payments, RMD decisions, estate moves, a business sale—and the advisor who fields those calls is the advisor who keeps the account. The 800 tax clients are the visible asset; the visibility they give the firm's UHNW households is the larger one.

The platform arms race has moved to the advanced planning stack, and Grimes at $7 billion is buying a piece of that stack while Sowell is building its own. The firms that answer tax and estate questions in-house are better positioned to hold the $5 million-plus household; the firms that keep routing those questions to outside CPAs are renting the relationship. The tax-client count is the visible near-term metric; the figure that will matter is retention among the firm's largest households.