Tax Season ’22: Working Harder for Every Dollar
We may be miserable but the money is rolling in.
By CPA Trendlines Research
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CHARTS & GRAPHS
Individual Tax Refunds Up 13%
Pros handle less than half of e-filings.
By CPA Trendlines
Six weeks into tax season, 63.5 million individual income tax returns had been filed, down 3.9 percent from the same period in 2021 – the week ending March 11, the latest data available from the Internal Revenue Service. Of those returns, 62 million had been processed, up 5.9 percent, pegging the current processing rate at a respectable 97.6 percent.
MORE: Tax Pros Preparing 46 Percent of E-filings | IRS Launches 2022 Season with “Strong Start”
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A tax season that began and ends one month earlier than the previous year makes comparisons difficult, with true perspective likely not possible until late May.
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IRS Tops List of Busy Season Problems
Forget COVID. The underfunded, understaffed, underequipped, underappreciated, misunderstood IRS is the top problem.
By CPA Trendlines
It probably won’t surprise you that the CPA Trendlines Busy Season Barometer identifies IRS operations as the biggest problem tax practitioners face today. In fact, we’ve never seen such widespread agreement among respondents—an astonishing 80 percent of them.
MORE in TAX: Shut Down the Tax Charlatans | Tax Pros Preparing 46 Percent of E-filings | Eight Quick, Easy Ways to Fix IRS Filing | For a Few: Why Busy Season 2022 Beats 2021 | A Tax Season Worse than 2021? | 16 Traits of the Best Tax Clients | Six Fixable Problems at the IRS | IRS under COVID: Heroes or Goats? | IRS Launches 2022 Season with “Strong Start” | Two Big (and Obvious) Ways IRS Could Work with Practitioners | Imagine a Fully Online IRS | The Real Cost of Interstate Sales Tax | IRS At Death’s Door? | Beyond Tax Prep: The Big Cha-Ching! | Crisis at the IRS | The IRS’s 10 Biggest Problems | Fear and Loathing for Tax Season ’22
- More in Tax Season here | More in Research & Surveys here | More in the CPA Trendlines Shop here
That consensus indicates that there really is a problem at the IRS. It’s underfunded, understaffed, underequipped, and, at this point, underappreciated and misunderstood.
The real problem is that the problem is creating problems. IRS staff can’t keep up with correspondence, yet the computers, even though working off an operating system that dates back to the Kennedy administration, keep churning out moot notices and undeserved penalties.
Tax Pros Preparing 46 Percent of E-filings
The crunch hasn’t hit IRS.gov yet.
By CPA Trendlines
The FinTech Flood: Accounting Will Never Be the Same
Venture capital and private equity are pouring billions into financial technology start-ups. And this business will never be the same.
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With Rick Telberg
For CPA Trendlines
A tsunami of venture capital and private equity is flooding into new tech startups, enough to swamp the entire tax, accounting, bookkeeping, and payroll sector, according to a new study by CPA Trendlines.
MORE: How Private Equity Changes Everything | The FinTech Flood: Accounting Will Never Be the Same | The Disruptors: Re-Inventing Accounting with Tyler Anderson | The Disruptors: How to Scale with New Padgett COO Amanda Aguillard | Eat that Frog: Asking for a Prospect Meeting | Growing Revenue Through Client Service | Lease Accounting Is About to Get Very Real | Google Ads for New Tax Season Clients | Exclusive: Eisner CEO Charly Weinstein Explains the Private Equity Deal | Flash Briefing: A “Call to Arms” after Private Equity Deal | Four Ways to Beat the Staffing Shortage, with Pasha Malik
Here, CPA Trendlines founder, publisher, and editor Rick Telberg delivers the keynote at the New York Finance & Accounting Show, explaining what it means for the future of the profession, including: