A reusable context document. Loaded by any agent built for R&D Advantage. The source of truth for context about the business.
We're the specialist firm that family offices, private equity, and venture capital groups refer their portfolio companies to when the R&D tax credit is on the table.
One specialization. Research and development tax credits. Nothing else. Not a practice area inside a broader tax firm. Not a side offering. One thing, done at depth, every engagement.
The work itself: federal and state R&D tax credit substantiation. Technical interviews with the client's team. Qualified research expense calculations. Project narratives. The audit-ready deliverable. Audit defense if it's triggered.
Audit support is part of the original engagement, not a separate line item.
Family offices, private equity firms, and venture capital groups don't file R&D tax credits. Portfolio companies do. When the credit question surfaces — inside a diligence review, a tax planning conversation, or a Chief Financial Officer's first pass at the prior year — the question isn't whether the credit exists. It's who you can trust to document it to your standard, manage the engagement without being managed, and hand your client back a deliverable that holds up in audit years after filing.
When you refer your portfolio or your clients to a specialist, your own judgment is part of the engagement.
Within the engagement, the work happens with portfolio company Chief Financial Officers, controllers, and technical leads. The referrer is kept informed at the milestones that matter and is otherwise not asked to manage the relationship or oversee the work. Full buyer detail is in 03-buyer-profile.
Floor. $1M in qualified research expenses. Companies below this floor are not engaged directly; they are routed to a software-based solution Charles is building (V1 expected end of June 2026, available to Platform Accounting Group and other partners).
We don't replace the tax preparer, the wealth manager, or the family office Chief Financial Officer. We produce the specialized work — the four-part test analysis, the qualified research expense calculation, the project narratives, the complete audit-ready deliverable — and hand it to your existing team to file. Relationships stay intact.
Pricing. Never on a public surface. Handled directly with the referring firm so it fits the situation. Engagement structure is a conversation between Charles and the referrer after fit is established.
The ask.
Fifteen minutes, no pitch.
The work spans manufacturing, engineering, software, and the life sciences — and every engagement is built the same way: disciplined documentation, audit support included, full coordination with your existing tax preparer.
Charles' framing on declining work that doesn't fit:
Not every activity qualifies, and not every dollar of R&D spend is a qualified research expense. We tell clients when something doesn't meet the four-part test. The credit a client keeps is worth more than an inflated credit that creates a negative return when they have to give it back.
Charles Riggs — Founder & Chief Executive Officer.
Charles founded R&D Advantage after more than a decade in public and private accounting, where he worked on research and development credit studies for Fortune 500 companies. Having spent some of those years at PricewaterhouseCoopers, he built R&D Advantage around one idea: the documentation discipline the largest firms apply to their largest clients, produced independently by a specialist firm for companies whose advisors hold them to the same standard.
Also co-founder of Incentive Partner, a software platform for R&D credit documentation.
Jeffrey Ting — Director of Operations. Six years at PricewaterhouseCoopers' Los Angeles specialty tax practice (Silicon Valley technology, Burbank and Hollywood entertainment). Eight years prior in the Marine Corps. Leventhal School of Accounting, University of Southern California.
Brandy Price — Director of Business Development.
Brandy leads business development at R&D Advantage, working with family offices, private equity firms, venture capital groups, and the portfolio companies they refer. Her work sits at the intersection of relationship and discipline — understanding where the R&D credit fits inside a client's broader financial picture, and introducing R&D Advantage at the moment it's actually useful to the people making the decision.
The Coach knows three people by name as part of the firm: Charles Riggs, Jeffrey Ting, and Brandy Price. Everyone else — referrers, portfolio company contacts, partners, prospects — lives in Airtable. When Brandy mentions a name the Coach doesn't recognize, the Coach pulls the contact record from Airtable directly.
Source. Direct quotes pulled from Charles' updated website copy at charles-voice/website-updated.md.