Houston, Texas · Est. 1996 · 350+ Texas companies
Employee benefits, 401(k) and retirement plans, individual health built on real autism and ABA expertise, and CFO & payroll services — for Texas employers with 2 to 1,000 employees. Anyone can quote your insurance. The rates are the rates. What you are hiring is everything we do around them.
Thirty years advising Texas employers and families. Justin Boulet joined the practice in 2004.
From 2-person shops to groups above 300 lives — benefits, retirement and payroll under one roof.
A published response standard, and one advisor on your account. Michael takes the call himself.
Every engagement is documented in a single plan record your team and ours both work from. A need spotted in one pillar is handled in the same relationship — not referred out.
Group medical, dental, vision, life and disability — designed around your claims data, not a carrier's package.
Plan design, ERISA process, contribution remittance, and a fee benchmark you can hand to an auditor.
Policies that actually cover ABA therapy, placed for families of children with autism — and the appeals nobody else will file with you.
CFO-level oversight without the $200k hire. Our team runs your payroll, remits your 401(k), files your ACA forms.
Free tool · No sales call required
If you averaged 50 or more full-time employees plus equivalents last year, the IRS requires Forms 1094-C and 1095-C — and most companies with variable-hour workers get it wrong. Payroll vendors miss it. Small CPA firms miss it. The penalty letters arrive years later.
Our free audit takes about three minutes: employee counts, hours, what you offer, what you've filed. You get a written risk assessment — before the IRS writes first.
Start the free ACA auditSources: IRS §4980H indexed amounts and information-return penalties for 2026; Rev. Proc. 2025-25 (9.96% affordability).
The principals
Michael E. Hipson founded the practice in 1996 and still answers his own phone. Justin Boulet joined in 2004 and leads CFO & Payroll Services — and the autism coverage work that has quietly become the heart of the firm.
Each is writing a book on what thirty years of this work actually teaches. The covers are done; the chapters are coming to the newsletter first.
Problem, method, result. Each one client-approved and available as a one-page PDF on request.
Record 2025-04 · Manufacturing · 180 lives
Record 2025-09 · Energy services · 412 lives
Record 2026-02 · Family · ABA advocacy
Case records are published with written client consent and are historical; they are not a promise of comparable results. Outcomes vary by group, plan year, claims experience and carrier.
Built for the person who owns this problem
Renewals, claims escalations, ACA letters, the employee whose ID card never came — one number, one team, same business day.
Talk to a personNames shortened at client request · consent on file
"They navigated the insurance side of our son's ABA therapy so we could spend that energy on him instead."
"The 401(k) transition was documented start to finish. Our committee finally has minutes worth keeping."
"Michael answers his own phone. After two national brokers, that alone changed how we run renewals."
The Hipson Brief · on Substack
Plain-English pieces on ACA filings, 401(k) governance, benefit renewals and autism coverage — curated by Michael Hipson and Justin Boulet from the questions clients actually ask. A podcast edition lives on the same feed.
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Three questions, ninety seconds. You will hear back the same business day — from Michael, not a queue.
2000 Dairy Ashford, Ste #360 · Houston, TX 77077
