The PE Platform Wars: Five Accounting Firms Battle for Market Share
CPA Trendlines Deal Tracker: A market drowning in capital but starving for qualified sellers is driving heated concentration.
By CPA Trendlines Research
Tax Prep Wages and Salaries Hit 4-Year High
Even as DIY returns cut into pros’ market share.
By CPA Trendlines
Wages for accountants and tax preparers are rising far faster than hiring as the 2026 filing season begins, even as early filing volumes trail last year’s pace.
Average hourly earnings in the accounting and tax preparation sector rose roughly 4 percent to 6 percent year over year, pushing pay for many accountants above $45 per hour, while employment across the tax and accounting sector is increasing only a few tenths of a percent.
MORE Busy Season
If current trends hold, the accounting industry will process about 150 million individual tax returns in 2026 — roughly 0.4 percent more than last year — with nearly the same number of workers..
The 7.6x Machine: How Grassroots Firms Are Taking Private Equity for a Ride
Fewer than 200 investors triggered almost 900 acquisitions.
By CPA Trendlines Research
A multiplier that has grown fourfold since 2021 reveals a transformation driven not by new private equity entrants, but by platform firms consuming the mid-market at speed.
It belies the notion that PE is taking over the accounting profession. In fact, new global research argues that local and mid-size firms worldwide are taking control of their own futures and using institutional capital to pick up the tab.
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The numbers that define private equity’s advance into accounting do not look the way most people expect. The headlines feature the big firms and the brand-name investors — TowerBrook Capital and EisnerAmper, New Mountain Capital and Grant Thornton, Ares Management and Baker Tilly. But the actual architecture of the transformation is being built one level below: in the relentless, largely unnoticed roll-up of smaller practices into PE-backed platforms.
PE Deal Tracker Update: Alan Whitman Plants a Flag in the Private Equity Landscape
Top Trends, Benchmarks, and Deal Points.
By CPA Trendlines Research
Cornerstone Report
Goldman Bets $75 Million on Fieldguide: AuditTech Comes of Age
Goldman’s rationale: Vertical AI with measurable ROI.
By CPA Trendlines
Fieldguide, an engagement workflow platform powered by agentic AI, has raised $75 million in a Series C round led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives, valuing the company at $700 million.
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MORE Tech and Assurance
The financing is one of the clearest signals yet that audit technology—long one of accounting’s most conservative corners—is becoming a prime target for growth equity investment.