Here’s what you’re looking for: CPA Trendlines Research

OUTLOOK & ANALYSIS

Outlook 2026: Can Tax & Accounting Payrolls Keep Surging to New Highs?

Record High: Tax and accounting industry hits 1,163,600 jobs, an annualized growth rate of 2%, and a new all-time high.

By CPA Trendlines Research

The full tax and accounting industry—which includes accounting, tax preparation, bookkeeping and payroll services—has hit a new record high with 1,163,600 jobs, representing an annualized growth rate of 2%, which is measurably stronger than the year-over-year 1.23% gain, according to new data examined by CPA Trendlines. But a choppy economy and political volatility have accountants and observers alike wondering if the trends can continue in 2026

MORE Staffing and Pay Trends

CPA offices managed to add 1,700 jobs over the past year, keeping the segment on a slow but positive trajectory. Employment at offices of certified public accountants is holding steady at 544,300 positions, matching the month-before figure. The revision from the previous estimate of 544,600 marks a modest 0.06% downgrade. The year-over-year trend improved slightly to 0.3%, up from 0.2% in the prior report. READ MORE →

SPECIAL

Outlook 2026: Higher Tax Prices, Rising Strains, and a Widening Gap Among Firms

The 2026 filing season will have an increasingly uneven pricing structure.

Busy Season Barometer: Most tax practices remain clustered below $1,500 in typical annual client fees. A smaller, higher-priced tier is emerging, characterized by minimum fees, selective client retention, and a stronger willingness to raise rates. Dig deeper, and the reality is even more nuanced.

By CPA Trendlines

Top-priced tax practices are driving typical annual client fees toward $3,000 and above this year, according to the CPA Trendlines Busy Season Barometer survey, underscoring how rising costs are pressuring most firms even as a smaller group gains pricing power through scale, selectivity, and tighter engagement control.

JOIN the Busy Season Barometer survey. Get the results. | MORE TAX and PRICING

One CPA respondent put it bluntly: “We are raising rates again this year. Some clients will leave. That’s fine. We can’t keep doing $400 returns when staff wages keep rising.” Another practitioner described a more selective approach: “We didn’t raise everyone equally. We raised prices where the work was painful and left simpler clients mostly alone.”

READ MORE →

SPECIAL

Outlook 2026: Tax Prep Prices Surge and Diverge

Experience, complexity, and scarcity redefine the market

Volume and consulting drive growth: Of the 48% of firms reporting advances, 78% credit more business and 54% credit higher-grade services. Source: NATP

By CPA Trendlines

Tax preparation is getting markedly more expensive in 2026, and not in the slow, incremental way many firms have long assumed they can explain away.

In a widely used pricing model, the National Association of Tax Professionals reports the average base charge for a Form 1040 with Schedules is $236, up from a 2024 average of $162 reported in the same study series. That’s a 45.7% nominal increase in two years for the profession’s signature product, before a single schedule, state filing, or complexity premium is added.

JOIN the Busy Season Barometer survey. Get the results.

MORE TAX and PRICING

The U.S. tax preparation market is not merely more expensive.  It is increasingly stratified, with pricing that clearly distinguishes between complex professional work and the lower tiers of retail and do-it-yourself alternatives.

Across multiple independent pricing measures, certified public accountants and credentialed tax professionals command fees that are substantially higher than the base costs advertised by major retail chains, software platforms, and dwindling government-sponsored free filing options. The result is a world of tax preparation pricing that reflects not only the complexity of engagement but also client expectations, risk management, service delivery models, and clear segmentation of value. READ MORE →

OUTLOOK & ANALYSIS

Outlook 2026: AI, Not Layoffs, Powers PE Valuations

How CPAs are using AI to boost EBITDA multiples.

Ilya and Victor Radzinski, TaxDome co-founders

By CPA Trendlines

Private equity investors are paying higher prices for CPA firms that deploy artificial intelligence to expand capacity, deepen professional benches, and systematize growth—rather than cut headcount.

MORE TaxDome | MORE Private Equity

“If AI were about to replace accountants and advisors, private equity wouldn’t be pouring billions into the sector,” TaxDome founders Ilya and Victor Radzinsky say in a public letter to stakeholders.

As dealmaking accelerates into 2026, the shift helps explain why valuation multiples for accounting firms continue to rise even as automation spreads through tax, audit, and advisory workflows. Private equity sponsors and strategic consolidators have completed hundreds of acquisitions of CPA firms since 2020, often at valuation multiples that would have been rare a decade ago.

READ MORE →

OUTLOOK & ANALYSIS

Ten Predictions: PE, Alternate Practice Structures and More

Every year, the 2025 Rosenberg MAP Survey asks the industry’s top consultants to share their observations from CPA firms across the country: How do you think the next 12 months will unfold? Trends? Predictions? Other thoughts? Also, how would you assess the last 12 months? Trends? Observations? Struggles?

Valuations have changed … and risen.

By Phil Whitman
 The Rosenberg Survey

While many trends will continue, here are my Top 10 predictions:

  1. Traditional M&A activity, CPA firm to CPA firm, will continue to be very robust.

Not all CPA firms will qualify for investment by private equity and other strategic investors. As such, firms will combine for a variety of reasons including: succession and transitions, increasing profitability and gross revenues, expansion of service offerings, expansion of geographic coverage as well as adding additional depth and breadth in existing service lines.

MORE: The 2025 Rosenberg MAP Survey is available from CPA Trendlines here.

  1. Valuations of CPA firms will increase as private equity creates bidding wars between each other. We have already seen demand of CPA firms of certain sizes exceeding supply. As such, we believe that even the larger private equity-backed firms will see acquisitions of smaller firms as not only lucrative additions but significantly more supply. Approximately 10,000 +\- firms with two or more partners that are members of the AICPA. Many of these smaller firms are very profitable and have been seeing multiples of two to three times gross revenues.

READ MORE →

SPECIAL

The CPA PE Playbook: Private Equity 2026 Outlook & Strategy Guide

PRO Member download here
[PRO Members-Only Bonus]

The Definitive Guide to Private Equity’s Transformation of the CPA Profession.

Exclusively for PRO Members Only, here

Not yet a PRO Member? Go PRO here

The accounting profession is changing faster than at any time in its modern history—and private equity is driving the shift. More than $30 billion in new capital has entered CPA firms since 2020, igniting a powerful wave of consolidation, modernization, and strategic reinvention. Firms that once relied on incremental growth and traditional partnership structures are now operating as high-performance platforms built for scale, technology adoption, and national reach.

The CPA PE Playbook is the most comprehensive analysis available today on this historic transformation.

If you want to know where the profession is heading, how PE-backed firms are competing, and what it will take to thrive in the next decade, this is the report you need.

Exclusively for PRO Members Only

(PRO Member Log in required)
Go to download
Not yet a PRO Member? Upgrade with one of today’s great offers here.

Go Pro Today
Go PRO here

READ MORE →

OUTLOOK & ANALYSIS

Tech, Talent, Advisory Will Fuel Growth

Every year, the 2025 Rosenberg MAP Survey asks the industry’s top consultants to share their observations from CPA firms across the country: How do you think the next 12 months will unfold? Trends? Predictions? Other thoughts? Also, how would you assess the last 12 months? Trends? Observations? Struggles?

Accounting firms are finding themselves in one of two camps.

By Scott Moore
 The Rosenberg Survey

Growth-oriented firms will continue to explore their options to sustain their longevity and competitiveness. Whether they remain independently owned or become investor-backed, key areas of focus will be to seek ways to harness technology, optimize their talent strategies and elevate client value with advisory models.

MORE: The 2025 Rosenberg MAP Survey is available from CPA Trendlines here.

A renewed focus on growth has gained momentum, fueled by investor interest, technological advancements and the adoption of advisory models.
READ MORE →

CHARTS & GRAPHS

2026 Outlook: Why Small Firms, PE Giants, and the Middle Are Headed in Different Directions

A profession splitting in three.

By CPA Trendlines Research

The U.S. accounting profession is no longer moving along a single growth continuum. It is splitting into three distinct economic paths—each governed by a different logic, facing different challenges, and offering different prospects. In 2026, these paths are likely to diverge further.

MORE Outlook & Analysis

At one end, solo and micro-firm accountants are increasingly choosing independence and control over scale. At the other end, large firms backed by private equity are consolidating aggressively in areas where profits are already concentrated. Between them sits the traditional mid-size firm, caught between two models that are pulling the profession apart.

For many mid-size firms, 2026 will force a choice: Grow larger and enter the consolidation race? Or deliberately shrink, specialize, and adopt a more solo-like economic model?

For smaller practices, it means they will find a supportive environment, provided they specialize and price their services intelligently. Large firms will accelerate consolidation and extract scale-driven returns. And mid-size firms will face increasing pressure to choose a direction. READ MORE →

OUTLOOK & ANALYSIS

The 8 Mega Trends Every CPA Needs to Understand before 2026

What happens to accountants when AI agents run the economy.

By CPA Trendlines Research

For most of the past decade, “digital transformation” meant faster systems, better dashboards, and incremental automation layered on top of human decision-making. By 2026, that framing will no longer hold.

The defining shift now underway is not simply more technology, but who—or what—executes economic activity. Across finance, operations, compliance, and professional services, autonomous systems are moving from support roles into execution roles. Software is no longer just informing decisions. it is initiating them.

MORE on Artificial Intelligence

That transition is reshaping how work is done, how risk is distributed, and how trust is established. It is also quietly repositioning the tax and accounting profession—from recordkeeper and reviewer to certifier of machine-driven outcomes.

CPA Trendlines believes eight mega trends will define 2026—not as isolated developments, but as a converging system change. READ MORE →

ABOUT US

We’re Honored

Thank you, and Congratulations to the CPA Trendlines community of influencers.

By CPA Trendlines Research

CPA Trendlines Research extends its congratulations and appreciation to the 39 authors, creators, contributors, collaborators and guests who appear in this year’s edition of the Top 100 Most Influential People by Accounting Today.

“We’re very grateful to the brilliant thought leaders and changemakers who make CPA Trendlines what it is,” says CPA Trendlines founder and CEO Rick Telberg.

Accounting Today calls CPA Trendlines “a platform for a wide range of diverse voices to share exciting new ideas through articles, podcasts, videos and books, while also offering useful research data and practical intelligence on the critical issues facing the profession to an audience of more than half a million accountants.” And terms Telberg “one of the great impresarios of accounting.”

Among this year’s Top 100, including the new names to watch:

READ MORE →

OUTLOOK & ANALYSIS

Four Strategic Fronts for Accounting Firms

Every year, the 2025 Rosenberg MAP Survey asks the industry’s top consultants to share their observations from CPA firms across the country: How do you think the next 12 months will unfold? Trends? Predictions? Other thoughts? Also, how would you assess the last 12 months? Trends? Observations? Struggles?

For some, independence is a strategic choice.

By Gary Thomson
 The Rosenberg Survey

The next 12 months will see independent-minded firms pressing harder on four strategic fronts – clarifying their five-year vision, defining the priorities to get there, calculating the cost, and determining where the capital will come from. These questions will keep the mergers and acquisitions market hot, as some firms pursue scale or stability through deals while strong, well-capitalized players step into market gaps left by consolidation.

MORE: The 2025 Rosenberg MAP Survey is available from CPA Trendlines here.
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

 

Artificial intelligence and automation will move from experiments to deliberate deployment, with clear expectations for efficiency, insight and safeguards. Outsourcing will remain a growth lever, but firms will also invest more heavily in their people – expanding career opportunities, developing leaders and using culture as a talent magnet.
READ MORE →

PRO Member Exclusive

What’s In, What’s Out for the Digital CPA in 2026

Cloud Foundations Out, AI-Powered Growth In.

People you know: Some of the CPA Trendlines contributors and collaborators on the agenda at the 2025 Digital CPA conference.

By CPA Trendlines Research

Tax and accounting firms appear poised in 2026 to double down on AI-driven services, accelerate developments in blockchain accounting, add new automations to CAS platforms, pursue transformative audits, and reimagine talent pipelines.

MORE: Tech and Fintech

If this year’s Digital CPA Conference in Washington, D.C., is any indication, then 2026 will be characterized by AI ubiquity, CAS at the core, and strategic boldness.

Comparing the 2024 and 2025 events back-to-back reveals a dramatic evolution in themes, speakers, and firm strategies — effectively a “what’s out vs. what’s in” for the profession.

READ MORE →