Why some providers never publish their pricing (and why we do)
Ostrich marketing applied to withholding tax recovery: the real reasons behind pricing opacity, what it costs the buyer, our published-grid bet — and its openly owned limits, numbers included.
Data reviewed on 8 min read
Try to find the price of a withholding tax recovery service: in the vast majority of cases you will find a contact form and the promise of a quote. That silence has precise causes — volume-negotiated pricing, fear of comparison, the habits of a market built for institutions — and it has a cost for you. We make the opposite bet: our grid is published in full, from the marginal scale (25% down to 8% by tranche) all the way to the revenue share paid to our partners (20% of the fee we collect). Including what does not flatter us: there are cases where we are not the cheapest, and this article shows you which ones.
Marcus Sheridan calls it "ostrich marketing": head firmly in the sand. Price is every buyer's first question — removing it from your website does not make it disappear, it merely sends the visitor off to ask it somewhere else. If you are reading this after combing through three providers' sites without finding a single figure, you know exactly what we mean. Let's look at why this industry stays silent, what that opacity costs you, and how to compare offers line by line — ours included.
Why don't recovery providers publish their prices?
Three reasons come up, from the most defensible to the least avowable.
Reason 1: prices genuinely negotiated on volume
The bulk of the recovery market was built for institutions: funds, custodian banks, family offices. At that scale every mandate is negotiated — volumes, countries covered, custody chain, exclusivity — and publishing a single price would contradict every signed contract. It is a real reason… which has nothing to do with an individual holding a few thousand euros of over-withheld tax: they will never access those negotiated terms, yet inherit the same smokescreen.
Reason 2: fear of comparison
A published price is a comparable price. As long as everyone prices behind closed doors, no comparison table is possible and every firm can call itself "competitive" without ever proving it. Transparency turns an opaque service into a comparable offer — which is precisely what the least competitive players dread.
Reason 3: charging what each client will bear
The mandatory discovery call is not just a sales ritual: it is an audit of your ability to pay. Portfolio size, deadline pressure, ignorance of the alternatives — every piece of information given before the quote can adjust the quote. When the price arrives after qualification, it is no longer a price: it is an estimate of your consent.
What pricing opacity costs the buyer
- Time: several calls, chasers and exchanges to obtain figures two web pages could have provided.
- Anchoring without a reference: the first quote you receive becomes your benchmark — even though it was built precisely without competition.
- An asymmetry premium: the party who knows the market's prices when you don't will charge you that information gap.
- Calendar pressure: while you collect quotes, the clock runs — only 2 years in Canada from the end of the calendar year of withholding.
- No profitability check possible: without a price, there is no way to know whether a Swiss claim worth a few hundred euros deserves to be outsourced — or not.
Our reverse bet: publish everything, even what works against us
Our complete grid is online: the marginal scale by tranche, the €39 floor, the €5,000 cap, fixed-fee services, the subscription, disbursements at cost — down to the 20% revenue share paid to the advisers who refer us, a line almost nobody discloses. The full figures live on the pricing page and the full reasoning in how we get paid.
| The question that matters | At FiscalPlace | At a provider with no public grid |
|---|---|---|
| The exact rate applied to your claim | Published: marginal scale from 25% to 8% | Disclosed after a call, sometimes after a signed mandate |
| The minimum per claim | €39 — published | Must be asked for explicitly |
| The fee cap | €5,000 — published | Rarely offered |
| The cost on failure | Zero (excluding third-party disbursements at cost) | Variable — get it in writing |
| Disbursements (confirmations, stamps…) | Passed on at cost, receipts provided | Sometimes marked up |
| The referral fee (revenue share) | Published: 20% of the fee collected | Almost never revealed |
The honest limits of our model (yes, sometimes we cost more)
A published grid is the same for everyone: that is its strength, and its limit. A family office negotiating an institutional mandate on volume will sometimes get better terms than our scale — that is true, and we would rather write it here than let you discover it elsewhere. Above €75,000 recovered we ourselves switch to bespoke quotes: at that scale, tailoring is legitimate, and we simply display where it starts.
Second limit, with numbers: against a hypothetical competitor charging a flat 18% with no minimum and no side fees, our marginal scale is more expensive up to roughly €17,900 recovered. Beyond that it regains the advantage — and the €5,000 cap widens the gap. The proof:
| Amount recovered | Our grid (marginal) | Flat 18% | Cheaper option |
|---|---|---|---|
| €1,115 | €278.75 | €200.70 | The flat rate |
| €2,840 | €686.20 | €511.20 | The flat rate |
| €30,000 | €4,675 | €5,400 | Our grid |
| €100,000 | €5,000 (cap) | €18,000 | Our grid |
Third limit, owned as well: our €39 floor makes very small claims proportionally expensive — under roughly €156 recovered, the effective rate exceeds 25%. The simulator shows you this before anything is opened, and sometimes concludes: "don't open this claim".
How do you compare two offers line by line?
- Is the rate flat or marginal? A flat percentage and a marginal scale produce very different invoices depending on the amount — the table above proves it in both directions.
- What is the minimum per claim, and does it apply to claims that fail?
- Is there a fee cap? Without one, a large claim can cost a great deal for the same work.
- Are any fees due upfront or on failure? "Success-based" must mean: nothing otherwise.
- Are disbursements (custodian confirmations, form certifications, translations) passed on at cost, receipts attached?
- Does an intermediary earn a referral fee on your claim, and how much?
To put numbers on the first item, our article on the full cost of recovery details the grid with four worked examples — the natural next read after this one. And the comparison page puts the approaches side by side, ours included.
Your questions about pricing transparency
Is your grid negotiable?
No, up to €75,000 recovered: the price is the same for everyone — that is the whole point of a published grid. Above that, a quote is warranted: volumes genuinely change the cost structure, and we display it rather than pretend otherwise.
Why do so many providers require a call before giving any figure?
Because the quote there is built after qualification: portfolio size, urgency, which alternatives you know about. It is not illegitimate as such — it is simply unfavourable to the buyer, who can neither compare nor verify that another client pays the same price.
Doesn't publishing your prices help your competitors?
Probably, yes. But the client we want is the one who compares before signing — and that client needs public figures. If our grid pushes the industry to publish theirs, everyone wins, us included.
Are you always the cheapest?
No, and the table above shows it: a flat 18% with no minimum would undercut us below roughly €17,900 recovered, and a negotiated institutional mandate can beat our scale on large volumes. What we do guarantee is that the displayed price is the paid price — and zero on failure.
Where can I find all of your prices?
On the pricing page: the marginal scale, fixed-fee services, the Monitoring & Alerts subscription (€19 per month or €149 per year, per portfolio) — and in "how we get paid", which also explains the 20% partner revenue share.
Full scale, fixed fees and worked examples — no figure is missing.