Outsourced CFO & Accounting Services in Tacoma
Financial leadership built for the Gateway to the Pacific. Expert outsourced finance for port logistics operators, defense contractors serving Joint Base Lewis-McChord, healthcare systems, and manufacturers navigating international trade flows, government compliance, and the cyclical rhythms of the Pacific Northwest economy.
The Tacoma Business Landscape
Tacoma's identity as a business city is shaped by two institutions that tower over every other economic force in the region: the Port of Tacoma and Joint Base Lewis-McChord. The port, operating through the Northwest Seaport Alliance alongside the Port of Seattle, ranks as the third-largest container port complex on the entire West Coast, processing more than $80 billion in annual trade value. Container vessels laden with goods from China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, and Taiwan arrive at Tacoma's deepwater terminals daily, and the freight brokers, warehousing operators, customs specialists, trucking companies, and third-party logistics providers that move those goods inland constitute the economic backbone of the city. Without the port, Tacoma as a business center simply would not exist in its current form.
Joint Base Lewis-McChord sits just south of the city limits and is the largest military installation on the West Coast by personnel, home to I Corps, the 62nd Airlift Wing, and more than 40,000 active-duty service members along with tens of thousands of civilian employees and military family members. The base's economic impact exceeds $14 billion annually when accounting for direct payroll, civilian employment, retiree spending, and the vast network of defense contractors providing facility maintenance, IT services, logistics support, engineering, and security services. For local businesses, JBLM is both a massive customer and a gateway to the broader Department of Defense contracting ecosystem.
Beyond these two anchors, Tacoma has built a diversified economy that includes MultiCare Health System—one of the Pacific Northwest's largest healthcare providers—a legacy manufacturing sector rooted in timber, pulp, and heavy industry, and a steadily expanding professional services community. The cost of doing business remains meaningfully lower than Seattle's, though the gap has narrowed as the region has grown. And every Tacoma business must contend with Washington State's distinctive tax structure: no state income tax, but a Business and Occupation tax levied on gross receipts regardless of whether the company makes a profit. For business owners generating $5M to $50M in revenue, Tacoma offers real opportunity—but extracting it requires finance leadership attuned to the city's specific economic machinery.
Port of Tacoma
$80B+ Trade
Third-largest West Coast port complex
JBLM
40,000+ Active
Largest West Coast military base
B&O Tax
Gross Receipts
No income tax, unique tax structure
Port Logistics and International Trade Finance
The Port of Tacoma creates a financial environment that most inland businesses never encounter. Companies embedded in the port logistics chain deal daily with customs duties and tariff classifications that shift with trade policy, foreign trade zone regulations, bonded warehouse requirements, and documentation standards that must satisfy both U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the regulatory agencies of trading partner nations. A single tariff misclassification on an imported shipment can trigger retroactive duty assessments, penalties, and shipment holds that ripple through an entire supply chain. For a freight brokerage or third-party logistics provider generating $10M to $30M in revenue, these compliance requirements are not peripheral to the business—they are the business.
Cash flow dynamics in port logistics are particularly demanding. Freight brokers and 3PLs typically pay carriers, drayage operators, and warehouse providers before collecting from the shippers and importers they serve, creating a structural cash gap that widens during peak shipping season. The trans-Pacific calendar follows a well-established rhythm: volumes surge from August through October as retailers build holiday inventory, drop sharply during Lunar New Year in January and February, and fluctuate through spring and summer with agricultural exports and manufacturing cycles. A logistics company with fixed overhead—warehouse leases, dispatching staff, equipment maintenance—must generate enough cash during peak months to sustain operations through the slower periods, and a forecasting model that fails to account for these seasonal swings will chronically misjudge liquidity needs.
Currency exposure adds another dimension of risk. Even companies that invoice exclusively in U.S. dollars face indirect currency effects: when the Japanese yen weakens, Japanese export volumes to the U.S. may increase, boosting demand for Tacoma logistics services. When the Chinese yuan strengthens, import pricing shifts and trade volumes may contract. Companies that maintain direct relationships with overseas shipping agents or freight forwarders may have actual transaction exposure requiring tracking and potentially hedging. Finance leadership that understands the intersection of international trade, seasonal logistics cycles, and working capital management is not a luxury for Tacoma port companies—it is the foundation on which every other business decision rests.
Defense Contracting Around Joint Base Lewis-McChord
JBLM's presence transforms Tacoma into one of the most active defense contracting markets on the West Coast. The base's sheer scale—encompassing army, air force, and special operations units across more than 90,000 acres—generates continuous demand for facility maintenance, base operations support, information technology services, logistics and supply chain management, environmental remediation, and engineering services. Prime contractors like KBR, AECOM, and Leidos maintain local offices to service JBLM contracts, and beneath them operates a tier of mid-market and small business contractors that perform much of the actual work. For companies in this ecosystem generating $5M to $30M in revenue, the financial management requirements are fundamentally different from anything the commercial world demands.
Federal Acquisition Regulation compliance and DCAA-auditable cost accounting are non-negotiable prerequisites for doing business with JBLM. Every direct cost must be traced to a specific contract or task order. Indirect costs—fringe benefits, overhead, general and administrative expenses—must be pooled, allocated through defensible rate structures, and submitted annually through incurred cost submissions. The government retains the right to audit these rates retroactively for years after a contract concludes, which means a cost allocation decision made today can be challenged and reversed five years from now. For a company that mixes government and commercial revenue, maintaining the wall between these two accounting worlds is critical—and a single instance of co-mingling expenses can trigger audit findings with consequences ranging from rate adjustments to debarment.
Government payment cycles impose their own cash flow discipline. Cost-reimbursement contracts require detailed invoicing that matches incurred costs to specific contract line items before the government releases payment. Subcontractors face even longer payment chains, sometimes waiting 60 to 90 days after performing work before cash flows through the prime contractor. During continuing resolutions—which have become routine in federal budgeting—new contract awards and modifications can freeze for months, creating revenue gaps that no one forecasted. An outsourced finance team with government contracting experience provides Tacoma defense companies the compliance infrastructure and cash flow planning capabilities they need without the overhead of building a full-time government accounting department at Pacific Northwest salary levels.
Healthcare Across the South Puget Sound
Tacoma serves as the healthcare hub for the entire South Puget Sound region, anchored by MultiCare Health System—a community-owned organization operating hospitals, clinics, and specialty services across Pierce County and beyond—and CHI Franciscan (now part of CommonSpirit Health), which adds another major system presence. Surrounding these hospital systems are hundreds of physician practices, urgent care centers, imaging facilities, home health agencies, behavioral health providers, and medical device companies that together employ tens of thousands of professionals and generate billions in annual healthcare spending across the region.
The payer mix in Tacoma's healthcare market carries distinctive characteristics that affect financial performance at every level. Tricare, the military health insurance program, represents a significant share of covered lives due to the JBLM population—and Tricare has its own reimbursement rates, claims processing requirements, and authorization protocols that differ from commercial insurance. Premera Blue Cross and Regence dominate the commercial market. Apple Health, Washington's Medicaid program, covers a growing population with reimbursement rates that sit well below commercial payers. For a multi-location practice generating $8M to $20M in revenue, managing profitability across this fragmented payer landscape requires location-level and provider-level financial analysis that standard accounting setups simply cannot deliver.
Provider recruitment and compensation modeling present additional financial complexity. While recruiting physicians to the Tacoma area is less expensive than Seattle, the region still competes for talent with Portland, the Bay Area, and attractive lifestyle markets across the West. Guaranteed salary packages during the first 12 to 18 months of a new provider's tenure must be modeled against realistic patient volume ramp-up curves and the specific payer mix of the practice location. An overly optimistic projection can leave the practice subsidizing a new hire for years longer than expected. Finance leadership that builds conservative, data-driven provider addition models—grounded in Tacoma's actual demographics and competitive dynamics—protects healthcare companies from expansion decisions that look promising on paper but erode profitability in practice.
Manufacturing, Timber, and Industrial Operations
Tacoma was built on timber, shipping, and heavy industry, and those roots remain visible in the economic landscape today. Pierce County still supports active lumber mills, wood products manufacturers, pulp and paper operations, and the fabrication shops that serve them. Alongside these legacy industries, a modern manufacturing sector has developed—producing aerospace components for Boeing's operations in the Puget Sound region, food products for regional and export markets, and specialty chemicals and materials that leverage the port's import and export capabilities. For manufacturers generating $5M to $50M in revenue, the financial management challenges center on job costing precision, commodity price volatility, and the capital-intensive nature of industrial operations.
Timber and wood products companies face financial cycles that operate on timescales most businesses never consider. Stumpage prices—the price paid for standing timber before harvest—fluctuate with national housing starts, pulp demand, and competition from Canadian and South American producers. A lumber manufacturer that locks in pricing based on a favorable market can see margins evaporate within a single quarter if commodity prices shift. Equipment-intensive operations must balance lease versus purchase decisions, maintenance reserve planning, and depreciation strategies against both profitability targets and tax planning objectives. The port adds an export dimension: Tacoma manufacturers shipping products to Pacific Rim markets must manage export documentation, marine insurance, vessel scheduling, and the cash flow timing of international transactions.
For manufacturers with both domestic and export operations, the financial picture becomes genuinely complex. Revenue from domestic customers follows one set of payment terms and recognition rules, while export sales may involve letters of credit, foreign currency considerations, and longer collection cycles. Inventory management must account for raw material lead times that can stretch months when sourcing internationally through the port, while finished goods inventories for export must be coordinated with vessel sailing schedules to avoid costly warehousing delays. Finance leadership that integrates production planning, supply chain management, and financial forecasting into a unified operational picture is the difference between a manufacturer that merely survives commodity cycles and one that positions itself to profit through them.
Washington's Business and Occupation Tax Structure
Washington State's tax framework creates financial planning challenges that catch many business owners off guard, particularly those who relocate from income-tax states. The absence of a state income tax is real and valuable, but the Business and Occupation tax fills a portion of that gap by taxing gross receipts rather than profits. The standard service rate of 1.5% applies to most professional services, consulting, and logistics companies. Manufacturing and wholesaling benefit from a lower 0.484% rate. Retailing is taxed at 0.471%. While these percentages may appear modest, they compound meaningfully on a $20M revenue business—and crucially, the B&O tax offers no deduction for costs, no exemption during unprofitable periods, and no credit for losses carried forward from prior years.
Revenue classification is where the B&O tax becomes genuinely treacherous. A Tacoma company that provides both manufacturing services and professional consulting must correctly segregate revenue between classifications, because the tax rate difference between manufacturing at 0.484% and services at 1.5% on $10M in revenue represents a $100,000 annual swing. The Department of Revenue audits these classifications aggressively, and assessments for misclassification can include back taxes, penalties, and interest accumulated over multiple years. For companies that operate across multiple B&O classifications—which is common among Tacoma businesses combining logistics, manufacturing, and services activities—the compliance burden is substantial and the cost of errors is high.
Multi-state operations introduce additional complexity. Many Tacoma companies serve clients in Oregon, California, and other states, and each jurisdiction has its own rules about when a business has sufficient nexus to trigger filing obligations. A Tacoma logistics company with employees or warehouse space in Oregon faces Oregon's Corporate Activity Tax. A technology services company with customers in California may have California income tax exposure. The interplay between Washington's B&O tax and the tax regimes of neighboring states requires careful planning to minimize double taxation without creating compliance gaps. Finance leadership that navigates both the B&O system and the broader multi-state landscape can save a growing Tacoma company significant money while keeping it out of trouble with revenue departments in multiple jurisdictions.
What Growing Tacoma Businesses Need from a Finance Partner
The thread connecting every major industry in Tacoma is the layering of specialized complexity on top of pronounced cyclicality. Port logistics companies navigate international trade regulations that change with each administration alongside seasonal shipping volumes that can swing 40% between peak and trough. Defense contractors manage government compliance frameworks while contending with procurement cycles that freeze unpredictably during continuing resolutions. Healthcare providers optimize revenue cycles across a fragmented payer mix while adapting to shifting state policy. Manufacturers manage commodity price exposure and capital equipment decisions through economic cycles that can turn a profitable year into a loss within months. And every Tacoma business pays the B&O tax on gross receipts regardless of whether those receipts translate into profit.
A finance partner serving this market must bring genuine industry knowledge, not generalist bookkeeping skills applied with a Tacoma address. The ability to build a DCAA-compliant cost accounting system, model cash flow around trans-Pacific shipping calendars, optimize healthcare revenue cycles across Tricare and commercial payers, or manage commodity exposure in a timber products business requires domain expertise that takes years to develop. At the same time, many Tacoma businesses span multiple sectors—a company might provide logistics services to both commercial importers and military installations, requiring completely different financial treatments for work that appears superficially similar.
The businesses that grow successfully in Tacoma are the ones whose financial infrastructure matches the complexity of their operations. They build cash flow models that anticipate seasonal swings rather than reacting to them after the checking account runs low. They maintain compliance systems robust enough to satisfy government auditors without burying the organization in administrative overhead. They price their services with B&O tax implications and commodity volatility already factored into the model. And they have finance leadership that views the port, the military base, and the healthcare ecosystem not merely as customers but as interconnected economic systems with their own rhythms and requirements. That is the standard an outsourced finance partner in Tacoma must meet.
Scale Your Tacoma Business with Confidence
Get finance leadership that understands port logistics, JBLM defense contracting, healthcare revenue cycles, and Washington's unique B&O tax environment. We work with Tacoma businesses from $5M to $50M in revenue.