My CPA Won't Sign My Accredited Investor Letter. Now What?

You found a deal. The sponsor asked for third-party verification of your accredited investor status. You forwarded the request to the accountant who has done your taxes for eleven years — the person who already knows your income to the dollar — and got back a polite, firm no.

This happens constantly, and it is almost never about you. It is about how the request looks from the other side of the desk. Understanding that is the fastest way to either change your CPA's answer or stop wasting a week trying.

Why Your CPA Said No

Five reasons come up over and over. Your accountant probably didn't explain any of them, because explaining them takes longer than declining.

1. It looks like a comfort letter, and comfort letters are a claims magnet

For years, mortgage lenders have asked accountants to confirm that a self-employed borrower's business is healthy, or that a withdrawal won't impair the business. Professional liability insurers who write policies for CPA firms have flagged these third-party verification requests as a recurring source of claims, and the standing advice from the profession is to be extremely careful about any letter written for a third party to rely on. An accredited investor verification request lands in the same mental bucket the moment it arrives, and the firm's default answer to that bucket is no.

2. Their engagement letter doesn't cover it

A tax preparation engagement is scoped to preparing returns. It does not include issuing letters to third parties about your financial condition. Signing one means either amending the engagement or writing outside it — and writing outside a signed engagement is exactly what a firm's risk-management policy exists to prevent.

3. Disclosing your tax information to a third party requires your written consent

Section 7216 of the Internal Revenue Code restricts what a tax return preparer may do with your return information. Disclosing it to someone else generally requires a signed consent that meets specific content and formatting requirements, and getting that wrong carries real penalties. Your CPA cannot simply forward what they already have to a sponsor, and setting up a compliant consent is administrative work most firms would rather not do for a single letter.

4. They've never seen the documents the letter is about

If you're qualifying on net worth rather than income, your tax preparer has never reviewed your brokerage statements, your mortgage balance, your home's current value, or your credit report. They know your taxable income. Net worth is a different exercise with different source documents, and a careful professional will not attest to something they haven't examined.

5. Assurance language makes accountants nervous for good reason

The profession's attestation standards specifically bar a practitioner from giving assurance on solvency-type questions — whether someone is solvent, or has adequate capital. A verification letter is not a solvency opinion, but it rhymes with one, and a firm that doesn't do these regularly will not spend an afternoon working out the distinction.

Your CPA Is Allowed to Sign One

This is worth stating plainly, because a surprising number of accountants believe otherwise. Under Rule 506(c), one of the SEC's enumerated methods of verifying accredited status is written confirmation from any of four professionals: a registered broker-dealer, an SEC-registered investment adviser, a licensed attorney, or a certified public accountant. The confirmation must state that the professional has taken reasonable steps to verify the investor's accredited status within the last three months, and has determined that the investor is accredited.

CPAs are on that list by name. There is no additional license, registration, or SEC filing required to sign one. If your accountant told you they "can't" — as opposed to "won't" — they are mistaken about the rule, and the paragraph above is usually enough to correct it.

Note the three-month window. It is why these letters carry a shelf life and why sponsors ask for a recent one rather than the one you used last year.

What the Letter Actually Asks a CPA to Say

A compliant letter is short. It identifies the investor, identifies the signer and their license, states the basis for accreditation (income, net worth, or professional certification), states that the signer reviewed supporting documentation and took reasonable steps to verify, and gives the date. That is the whole job.

What it does not do is equally important, and this is the part worth showing your accountant:

• It does not opine on whether you should make the investment.
• It does not evaluate the offering, the sponsor, or the deal.
• It does not certify that you can afford the investment or that your business will remain solvent.
• It does not guarantee your financial position going forward — it speaks to a review performed on a specific date.
• It is not an audit, a review, or a compilation, and it does not create an attestation engagement.

Most of what makes accountants uneasy about third-party letters lives in that list — and none of it is in a 506(c) letter.

Four Ways Forward

A Script You Can Send Your CPA

Copy this, fill in the brackets, and send it. It works because it removes the three things your accountant is actually worried about: an unbounded scope, an unpaid favor, and a disclosure consent problem.

If the answer is still no, that's a legitimate business decision on their part — some firms have a blanket policy against third-party letters and will not make an exception. Take option two, three, or four and don't take it personally.

Professional Letter vs. Automated Check

Once you start looking for a verification provider, you'll find two broad categories, and they are not interchangeable. Some sponsors accept both; some accept only a signed professional letter. Ask before you pay.

	CPA-signed letter	Automated check	Your own CPA or attorney
Who signs it	A named, licensed CPA	Usually a platform, not a licensed professional	A named, licensed professional
What gets reviewed	Your actual documents, by a person	Data feeds and rules; often no human review	Your actual documents, by a person
Sponsor acceptance	Broad — this is the format Reg D sponsors expect	Varies; some sponsors decline it	Broad
Turnaround	Typically 24 hours	Minutes, when it works	1–2 weeks
Edge cases	Handled — trusts, LLCs, joint filers, licenses	Often falls back to manual anyway	Handled, if they'll take it on
Who pays	You, or the sponsor	Frequently the issuer, bundled into their platform	You

The honest tradeoff: an automated check is faster and often free to you when the sponsor has already paid for it. A signed professional letter is the format that travels — you can hand it to a second sponsor next month, and it doesn't depend on that sponsor's platform accepting a third party's API result. If your sponsor already provides an automated check and accepts it, use theirs. If they've asked you to produce a letter, you need a professional to sign it.

What Each Route Costs

Route	Cost	Turnaround	Notes
AccreditedNow	$99	Typically 24 hours	Licensed CPA review and signature; $29 rush option
Your own CPA	$250–$400+	1–2 weeks	If they'll take it on at all
Your own attorney	$300–$500+	1–2 weeks	Billed hourly, so scope creep is expensive
Your RIA or broker-dealer	Often free	Days	Only if they custody enough of your assets to verify
Sponsor verifies directly	Free	Varies	You hand over tax returns or statements to the sponsor
Entity, trust, or LLC	From $199	Typically 24–48 hours	Includes the underlying owners; more documents involved

One thing worth weighing on the "sponsor verifies directly" line: it is free, but it means sending your complete tax returns or account statements to the sponsor's staff rather than to a licensed professional bound by confidentiality rules. Some investors are fine with that. Many are not, and that discomfort is a large part of why the professional-letter route exists at all.