Recruiting firm Brewer Morris has released its 2025 US CPA salary guide and should you want to read the whole thing you can request it from them here. Perhaps you, like us, were getting bombarded with ads for it on Reddit and have already seen it.
It’s actually pretty cool how they do this guide. In it, they share some salaries for the 114 placements they made in 2024 including the position and city, like a tax manager in San Francisco getting $145,000 at a mid-size firm and an audit senior in Los Angeles working for $95,000 at a top 25 firm. Or an audit senior in Washington, DC getting $87,000 from a regional firm and a senior manager in tax with a salary of $160,000 at a top 10 CPA firm in Atlanta. You get the idea, there are a bunch more in the guide. Their average salary structure includes base and a bonus of 3-10%, depending.
They also have a chart of salaries for positions at CPA firms from entry level to MD, broken down by the average as well as top 25, top 300, and regional firm salary ranges. Let’s take a look at a few:
| Title/Experience | Average Salary | Top 25 CPA Firm | Top 300 CPA Firm | Regional Firm |
| Entry Level | 50,000-65,000 | 65,000-72,000 | 57,500-62,500 | 50,000-55,000 |
| 1st Year Associate | 55,000-75,000 | 70,000-80,000 | 65,000-75,000 | 52,500-60,000 |
| Senior | 75,000-100,000 | 85,000-100,000 | 80,000-90,000 | 75,000-85,000 |
| Senior Manager | 145,000-180,000 | 150,000-180,000 | 145,000-165,000 | 125,000-145,000 |
BTW they also have Executive Assistant roles listed and an entry level one makes the same as the average CPA firm senior. Don’t you just adore this profession?
It’s a short report so that’s the sum of the highlights. Again, you can read it yourself here.
