How KBKG Built a National Specialty Tax Consulting Firm: One CPA Relationship at a Time

For over two decades, KBKG has built its reputation around a simple idea: helping CPAs and their clients uncover valuable tax-saving opportunities that often require specialized technical expertise. What began as a niche practice within a Southern California accounting firm has grown into one of the nation’s leading specialty tax consultancies, serving businesses and accounting professionals across the United States.

KBKG’s story starts inside Krost CPAs, a Southern California accounting firm with a niche in the restaurant industry. The firm’s leadership recognized that cost segregation was particularly advantageous for restaurateurs who owned their buildings. By accelerating depreciation on specific building components, property owners could capture significant near-term deductions, unlocking capital to reinvest back into business growth.

Recognizing a massive nationwide opportunity, Greg Kniss was instrumental in turning this specialized practice into a dedicated business model. The group initially offered the service to its own accounting clients with strong results. Then, to scale the capability, they brought the technical engineering disciplines entirely in-house, recruiting Gian Pazzia from PwC and spinning KBKG out into its own separate corporate entity.

Independence meant one thing: KBKG could focus on helping as many CPAs and their clients as possible, not competing with them. That philosophy would become one of the firm’s defining characteristics. Rather than competing with accounting firms, KBKG positioned itself as an extension of CPA teams, providing specialized technical expertise while allowing trusted advisors to maintain ownership of the client relationship.

Today, KBKG remains an independent specialty tax consulting firm headquartered in Pasadena, California, with no ownership affiliation to any CPA firm.

Overcoming Skepticism Through Education

The early obstacle was awareness. At the time, many real estate owners and even their CPAs were unfamiliar with cost segregation or assumed the tax savings were simply too good to be true.

KBKG’s answer was to lead with education rather than with sales, invested heavily in building credibility through authoritative thought leadership, presentations, and sustained partnerships with CPA societies, particularly CalCPA.

By focusing on educating trusted advisors first, KBKG built the confidence and referral network that would become the foundation of its early growth. To date, KBKG has now issued over 50,000 hours of Continuing Professional Education (CPE) credits on various complex tax incentives. These educational sessions are frequently attended by CPAs across the country, employees of Big Four accounting firms, and IRS professionals. Today, the firm is an officially registered CPE sponsor through NASBA and an approved American Institute of Architects (AIA) Continuing Education Provider, bridging the gap between technical tax rules and practical application for architectural, engineering, and financial professionals.

A National Platform Across Specialty Tax Services

What started as a local practice is now a nationwide firm. As demand for cost segregation intensified across the United States, KBKG initially managed the volume by flying its technical engineering teams directly to client sites in all 50 states.

To provide more responsive, localized support, the firm gradually expanded its physical footprint. Today, KBKG maintains offices across major U.S. markets, including Los Angeles (through its Pasadena headquarters), New York City, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Detroit, Chicago, Dallas, and Houston. This infrastructure allows the firm to deliver both on-site support and national reach while maintaining close relationships with CPA firms and their clients.

As of 2026, KBKG has reported helping clients and accounting partners identify and unlock over $11 billion in tax benefits. Over its 25+ year history, the firm has hit impressive milestones, completing more than 80,000 specialty tax studies and building a multidisciplinary team that includes engineers, attorneys, tax professionals, former IRS personnel, and Certified Cost Segregation Professionals (CCSPs).

Expanding the Specialty Suite

Over time, KBKG evolved far beyond its foundational cost segregation practice to address a broader array of complex tax incentives, credits, deductions, and cost-recovery opportunities. The firm has deliberately expanded into several specialized practices to tackle highly technical areas that traditional accounting firms typically do not have the internal resources to support.

Through Enterprise Zone Credits, established in 2005, the firm helps businesses secure regional hiring and investment incentives. Its Research and Development tax credit practice, launched in 2008, quantifies federal and state credits for innovative tech, software, and manufacturing activities. As an example, KBKG successfully guided a San Francisco software firm through an evaluation that secured a combined $577,500 in federal and California R&D tax credits.

The firm also introduced Energy Incentives and Green Building Tax Services in 2009, evaluating deductions under Section 179D and credits under Section 45L for energy-efficient properties. Rounding out the suite, the firm provides deep technical analysis for repair versus capitalization reviews under tangible property regulations, alongside international and state tax solutions like transfer pricing, IC-DISC compliance, and negotiated state and local incentives. This high-level technical focus earned KBKG global industry recognition, including a Tier 3 ranking by ITR World Tax for its transfer pricing capabilities, placing the independent consultancy directly alongside premier national advisory operations and major corporate law firms.

Scaling Expertise Through Proprietary Technology

To make specialized tax knowledge more accessible to businesses and accounting professionals, KBKG has consistently invested in technology solutions.

In 2016, the firm launched the Residential Cost Segregator®, creating the first self-guided software designed to help users calculate accelerated depreciation for smaller residential rental properties. In November 2025, the firm expanded that framework by deploying CostSegregation.com, a digital platform designed for both residential and commercial real estate properties, allowing users to complete studies online in minutes with pricing starting at $495 per report and including full audit support and report corrections.

Similarly, KBKG developed Dash.tax to streamline evaluation of R&D tax credits. The application allows small businesses, growing startups, and their tax preparers to identify qualified research expenses, organize documentation, and generate the necessary deliverables for federal tax filings.

“The goal is not to replace expertise,” says Pazzia. “The goal is to use technology to make our expertise more scalable and accessible.”

The Road Ahead

KBKG’s stated goal is to help businesses identify $33 billion in tax benefits by 2033,a target that reflects both the firm’s confidence in the scale of unclaimed incentives and its ambition to deepen its reach across the CPA and business-owner community.

“I want KBKG’s legacy to be that we raised the standard in specialty tax consulting,” says Pazzia. “I want CPAs and businesses to think of KBKG as the firm that brought technical excellence, innovation, and integrity to an industry that needed all three.” ​For a company that grew largely through education, technical expertise, and CPA referrals, that vision reflects the same principle that fueled its rise from the beginning: building trust one professional relationship at a time.