[dafischer]

My wife has run a tax and accounting practice from our home office for the last 16 years. She's an EA with the IRS, and has approximately 300 tax clients. Throughout the year, she does bookkeeping and accounting for a good number of small businesses using Quickbooks.

I have 30 years corporate accounting experience, the last 20 being in manufacturing cost accounting. This past January, I lost my job due to the scaling down of our division by the Swiss parent company. Since my wife was limited in the amount of new clients she could take on, I joined her to help grow the business (as well as the fact the employment market for 55 year olds just plain sucks). Also, it saved her some money, as she let go the two part time "morons" that she had employed prior.

We charge $50 per hour for accounting services, and have not had one complaint about the price, in fact we could probably charge more. If you have a good accounting background, which it sounds like you do, you should be able to get about that rate, seeing what a CPA firm gets for the same basic stuff. Also, if you go this route, I'd recommend talking to your insurance guy about a good E&O policy, in case there's ever an expensive whoops.