A limited number of genuine market participants creates a somewhat unusual pricing dynamic in the WA Tax market.
Alternative Pricing
The overwhelming majority of firms regularly use or offer pricing methods outside of the hourly rate model with 94% of firms noting the use of such. In this regard fixed and capped fees were clearly the most common with almost 100% of firms adopting these models.
Somewhat surprisingly the use performance/outcome based fee models was far higher than in other states. Almost two-thirds (63%) of the market recorded using performance based models, the next highest recorded use of this model was in Victoria where just over one third of the market (36%) used performance based models.
Hourly Rates
Hourly rate wise WA’s tax lawyers sat across two bands – those who priced themselves between $500-$600 per hour (52% of the market) and those who priced themselves at $800 per hour and above (the remaining 48% of the market).
More specifically the $600-$700 per level was the most common amongst WA tax lawyers with 38% of the market sitting within this band. Following this was the $800-$900 per hour band where 28% of the market sat. 20% of the market listed their hourly rack rate as in excess of $900 per hour and 14% sat in the $500-$600 per hour band.