Compliance is what we have to do. Tax strategy is what makes the engagement worth it. I work with founders, professional service firm owners, and real estate investors in Dallas-Fort Worth who want a CPA who shows up between April 15ths, not just on them.
If your CPA files your return on time and rarely calls otherwise, you are not getting CPA-level value. You are getting tax preparation. I work with small business owners and high-earning individuals in Dallas-Fort Worth who want a real strategist, not a return filer.
The person doing the work
Cowell & Co. is a Dallas based CPA practice serving SaaS founders, professional service firms, real estate investors, restaurant operators, and high-earning individuals with complex tax and advisory needs. Compliance is the foundation of the work. Advisory is where the engagement earns its keep.
The same person who plans your taxes files them, answers your email, and sits across from you twice a year to look at the whole picture. No junior team learning on your account. No account manager relaying questions to someone you never meet.
Michael R. Cowell
CPA • EA • CFE • 15 years
Specializations
Active memberships
American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, Texas Society of CPAs, National Association of Tax Professionals.
The math nobody shows you
A return filer keeps you compliant. A strategist compounds decisions, year over year. Plotted as cumulative value, the difference stops looking like a fee and starts looking like a second income.
How the engagement is priced
Most CPA firms make you book a call to learn what anything costs. Here is the whole structure. Engagements are monthly, so the relationship is continuous instead of a once-a-year scramble.
$850 / month, starting
Accurate, on-time tax and bookkeeping with a real CPA on the other end of the email.
Set up clean books and S-corp election for a pre-Series A SaaS founder in Carrollton, saving an estimated $18,400 in first-year self-employment tax and eliminating quarterly estimated payment surprises.
$1,650 / month, starting
Compliance plus two semi-annual strategy sessions and a real strategist twice a year.
Restructured the entity stack for a Lewisville-based real estate investor with six rental properties, capturing $34,200 in previously missed depreciation in year one and a 4.8-point reduction in effective tax rate after the cost segregation study landed.
$4,800 / month, starting
Real financial leadership for $1M to $10M businesses, without hiring full-time.
Built monthly close, KPI cadence, and lender-ready financials for a Coppell-based professional services firm at $3.2M ARR, supporting their move from owner-managed bookkeeping to investor-readiness over nine months.
Currently accepting new clients. Advisory and Fractional CFO intake open for Q3 2026. Compliance-only intake for the 2025 tax year is closed. New compliance intake reopens November 1.
Dallas, Texas
Cowell & Co. works from downtown Dallas and serves founders, operators, and investors across Dallas, Collin, Tarrant, and Denton counties. Close enough to meet over coffee, set up to work with clients anywhere they are.
The office
The practice keeps a downtown Dallas office for the conversations that land better in person. Everything else runs through the client portal, so distance is rarely the deciding factor in who I work with.
Visit the office
See it in motion
Every Cowell & Co. engagement runs through a private client portal and an internal practice admin. Both are open for you to explore, no login required, no real data, every action just updates the interface.
Documents under review, tasks waiting on her signature, recent activity, and her next meeting with Michael. The view a Cowell client lives in between quarterly conversations.
Open the client portal The practice view16 active clients, a review queue, awaiting-documents flags, this month's billings. The operator's view of the practice, the same dashboard that would run yours.
Open the practice adminThese are interface previews built by DBJ Technologies. Click around, every section is interactive.
Proof
"Before Michael, I was hand-rolling my own books in a spreadsheet and writing quarterly checks I didn't understand. After year one, I have an S-corp, clean books, and zero spring panic. The intake fee paid for itself by April 15."
Dana Ruiz, founder, Ruiz Design Studio, Irving, 2026
"I owned six doors and one CPA who treated my returns like a side project. The cost segregation study alone shifted my numbers more than two years of rent increases. I'd switched yesterday if I could."
Priya Anand, principal, Grapevine Holdings, Grapevine, 2025
"We were stuck between 'too big for QuickBooks' and 'too small for a CFO.' The monthly close and dashboard he built turned the bank meeting from a hostage negotiation into a yes."
Andre Bellamy, partner, Bellamy & Reese, Addison, 2026
The aggregate ratings from the platforms clients actually check before they call.
Google Business Profile
4.9
63 verified reviews
QuickBooks ProAdvisor
5.0
41 verified reviews
Yelp
4.5
27 verified reviews
4.8
19 verified reviews
Demo ratings, shown to illustrate the layout. On a live client build each badge is a link to its source listing.
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Tell me about your situation. No pitch deck, no pressure. Just a direct conversation about what you need and how I can help.