About — Incentive Partner

01 — The origin

Three observations, one conclusion.

Incentive Partner did not emerge from a single moment. It emerged from three independent observations that, when laid next to each other, pointed at the same place.

Beat 01 — The taxpayer's frustration

Trevor underwent an R&D tax study. Charles delivered it.

The two had never met before. The credit at the end was real — substantial, and worth the work. The experience of getting there, however, was heavier than it needed to be. Forms, interviews, document requests, back-and-forth, calendar coordination — a process that didn't respect the constraint that a busy taxpayer has limited time to give.

Trevor's reaction was the operator's reaction: there has to be a better, more efficient way to do this.

Beat 02 — The expert's ceiling

Charles, building his consulting practice for over six years, saw the same process from the opposite side.

He had helped over a hundred companies capture R&D credits — first inside one of the Big-4 accounting firms, then through the practice he founded after that. What he saw was that growth was severely limited by labor: each new study consumed specialist hours roughly proportional to its size. Scaling the practice meant scaling the team, and the team's capacity was the rate limiter on revenue and reach. The clients he didn't serve weren't being served by anyone else.

Charles's reaction was the operator-expert's reaction: the labor-intensity of the process is the structural ceiling on this entire industry.

Beat 03 — The shared insight

When they compared the two views, a third observation emerged that neither had alone.

Many companies who legally qualify for the R&D tax credit don't actually claim it — because the value-to-effort ratio is too high. The credit at the end is real, but the labor cost of conducting the study is high enough that smaller projects don't pencil out. Specialists won't take small clients. Firms won't deliver in-house. So legally-available credits go unrealized, year after year.

The conclusion was structural: lower the value-to-effort ratio, and more companies can take advantage of the tax code. Make smaller projects worth pursuing. Make the experience light enough that a busy taxpayer welcomes it. Push the threshold down. Capture credits that were always there but practically out of reach.

02 — Why now

The reason this is operationalizable in 2026, and not in 2016, is AI.

Software is finally capable of carrying the substantive parts of work that previously required only specialist labor. A platform can calculate the credit against the current tax code. AI can review studies against case law and IRS guidance with reliability. Specialist time can be concentrated where humans uniquely add value: supporting the client through the work, handling edge cases, verifying the substance.

That collapses the labor-cost-per-study enough that the value-to-effort math changes. Smaller credits become viable. The threshold drops. The market expands.

Accounting firms — historically the wrong-shape entity for delivering R&D work, because they don't have the specialist staff and can't justify hiring them — become the right-shape entity, if they can deliver under their own brand without absorbing the specialist labor.

That is exactly what Incentive Partner is built to do.

03 — The founders

The pairing was the first design decision.

Incentive Partner needed both halves to be a real company: someone who has done the work at scale, and someone who has built the systems they wished had existed. One without the other would have produced a different — and weaker — kind of product.

Charles Riggs

Co-Founder · CEO

For more than a decade, Charles has helped startups, small companies, and large enterprises capture R&D tax credits — first inside one of the Big-4 accounting firms, then through the R&D specialty consulting practice he built and ran for over six years. Charles has personally led the work for more than a hundred company studies.

Inside Incentive Partner, he owns the R&D tax expertise: qualifying-activity standards, substantiation methodology, IRS-guidance fluency, audit posture. He leads the specialist team that supports clients through their studies.

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Trevor Paesl

Co-Founder · COO & CTO

Trevor has spent twenty years in technology, product, and R&D-conducting work. He has personally been on the receiving end of multiple R&D tax studies as a taxpayer — including the ones Charles delivered before they became co-founders.

Inside Incentive Partner, he owns the product, the platform, and the vision for the future of tax: building the software, designing the client experience. The taxpayer's perspective on the process is part of why the product exists in the shape it does.