SEARCH, SORT, FILTER – Look up by firm acquired, private equity investor, CPA firm platform, or date.
EXCLUSIVE INSIGHTS and notes on the biggest deals.
The CPA Trendlines CPA PE Deal Tracker™ now lists 621 transactions involving accounting, tax and related-service firms from January 2016 through October 2026. The pace is uneven at first and then relentless.
But today CPA Trendlines Research estimates that investors have pumped up the valuations of the acquired firms to a total of more than $60 billion.
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K1x is putting $175 million in new investment behind an expansion of its K-1 technology platform, with plans to accelerate product development, broaden its offerings and build a more standardized system for managing partnership tax data.
CEO John LaMancuso says the company is pushing beyond automating individual K-1 tasks. K1x wants to connect K-1 creation and aggregation into a unified platform that can move tax data among CPA firms, investment funds and investors with less manual handling.
“Start with the bottleneck, not the technology,” LaMancuso says.
But the Busy Season Barometer says that the real test comes after the work begins.
Busy Season 2027 (left) looks mostly positive. But history (right) shows early optimism usually fades. (CPA Trendlines Busy Season Barometer™)Join the Survey.Get the Results.™
By CPA Trendlines Research
Barely seven months after accountants closed a disappointing tax season, they are forecasting a better one for 2027, according to new readings from the CPA Trendlines Busy Season Barometer.
Some 42.8 percent expect the coming busy season to be better than 2026. Only 11.6 percent expect worse. The resulting net positive reading of 31.2 percentage points nearly matches the positive 29.8 recorded last December.
But last year’s early optimism, like many in the Barometer’s 22-year history, did not survive tax season. By April, the 2026 Barometer’s reading had fallen to negative 1.8, a reversal of more than 30 points as late clients, staffing constraints, technology problems, and the “Liberation Day” launch of a new tariff regime overwhelmed practitioner confidence.
Now that the profession is starting over, the question is what new surprises 2027 will bring.
Agentic AI does not have to replace an accountant to transform accounting. Its more practical role may be far less dramatic — and far more useful.
In this episode of Accounting ARC, Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA; Liz Mason, CPA; and Byron Patrick, CPA.CITP, explore how narrowly focused AI agents can help professionals retrieve information, analyze data, navigate systems, and make better-informed decisions.
Their conversation challenges one of the dominant narratives surrounding agentic AI: that firms should build autonomous digital employees capable of handling everything a staff accountant does. Instead, the hosts envision specialized agents that operate within structured systems, perform clearly defined tasks, and show users how they reach their conclusions.
“If you have agentic AI that’s built into an architecture that already exists, there’s a whole lot more that has to happen from a training perspective,” says Mason, CEO of High Rock Accounting.
That architecture, she explains, can include multiple agents working together rather than one agent attempting to handle an entire assignment.
A supplier provides new payment instructions. An executive sends an urgent bank transfer request. A payroll administrator receives a message asking to reset a password.
Each situation looks like ordinary business, but needs a control that works even when the request seems legitimate.
Understand your technology options: On Nov. 16, Donny Shimamoto presents “Understanding Your Cybersecurity Tech Options: How Non-Techies Can Mitigate Their Malware Risks.” This two-hour webinar offers 2 CPE credits and explores malware protection, device management, email security, backup, secure document exchange, and other risk areas. Learn how to assess your controls and identify remaining risks to discuss with your technology adviser.Explore the course and upcoming events
We do not need to become cybersecurity engineers to protect our organizations. In fact, cybersecurity tools don’t protect you from the situations above; traditional accounting internal controls do. We need to bring our understanding of risk, authorization, and accountability into decisions about technology and the work that we are doing.
It makes no difference what size practice you have. The following tips apply if you are developing an individual marketing plan, a departmental plan or one for the entire firm.
MOVE Like This With Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk
For CPA Trendlines Research
In this episode ofMOVE Like This, Shane Lloyd, chief inclusion officer at Baker Tilly, joins Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk to talk about what it really takes to build a workplace where people have the opportunity to contribute, advance, and succeed.
For Lloyd, inclusion isn’t an extracurricular activity or a collection of programs. It should be embedded throughout the talent lifecycle and understood as part of how leaders run the business.
Lloyd’s background in behavioral neuroscience and public health shapes how he approaches that work. Rather than focusing only on changing individual behavior, he looks at the environment in which people are working and asks what conditions allow some people to thrive while creating barriers for others. In the workplace, he says, some employees may advance as though they have a rocket propelling their careers, while others are climbing “invisible hills and mountains” to reach the same place.
Accounting firm owners expect higher prices and revenue in the 2027 busy season. Fewer than two in 10 expect to hire.
Practitioners’ Plans for the 2027 Busy Season:
Higher Billing Rates, not More People
More than three in four tax and accounting firm owners are planning rate increases for the 2027 busy season, according to the CPA Trendlines 2027 Outlook Survey. 71.4% expect revenue growth. And 62% are planning increased tech expenditures. Only 17.6% are planning on more headcount.
Stymied by capacity issues, tax and accounting firms are hoping to get new top-line growth not so much from more clients or more work as from higher billing rates, according to the new CPA Trendlines 2027 Outlook Survey.
More than nine in 10 owners expecting revenue gains are also planning to push through higher billing rates for the 2027 busy season.
JOIN the SURVEY: CPA Trendlines is canvassing the profession to identify new strategies, future business conditions, artificial intelligence, private equity, client accounting services, and busy season management. The survey takes less than nine minutes, and participants can request an exclusive early look at the topline results. Click here to Join the survey. Get the results
“I think we are at a growth hump. It is hard to get over,” says the owner of a firm with one to nine people.
The CPA Trendlines survey shows that for the 2027 busy season, 77.6% expect prices or billing rates to rise, 71.4% expect higher revenue, 61.6% expect higher technology spending, and 53.1% expect higher net profit. Just 17.6% expect staffing to increase. Among those expecting revenue gains, 76.3% expect flat or lower headcount. Of those, 57.5% also expect to handle more clients.
Price increases are mostly moderate: 67.7% expect increases of up to 10%, and 9.9% expect more than 10%. Profit expectations trail revenue, with 53.1% expecting an increase, 36.9% expecting little or no change, and 10% expecting a decline.
There are few ways to sink an accounting firm faster than winning bad clients. They will rob your profitability, steal your sanity and cause havoc among your staff and other client relationships.
Accounting firms are facing extraordinary changes today: private equity, AI, the shift to advisory, and a continuing wave of partner retirements, all at the same time. Matt Rampe, a partner at Rosenberg Associates, says the volume of change is only part of the problem. As he puts it, “we have all these changes happening at once, and nobody taught us how to do change well.”
The complexity of change is also increasing. While firms largely know how to do things like grow tax revenue by 5%, they don’t always have the skill sets or mindsets needed to develop an AI governance plan, become strategic advisors, or prepare the next generation to lead.
Rampe sees the same failure points in the firms he works with. READ MORE →
