CHARTS & GRAPHS

Higher Wages, Fewer Jobs: A New Era for CPA Staffing

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AI and India Replace U.S. Staff in CPA Industry Shakeup.

The great restructuring: After the pandemic rebound, hiring gradually slows, finally going negative this year.

By CPA Trendlines Research

The nation’s tax and accounting firms are cutting job rosters even as they’re aggressively raising wages, signifying a structural retrenchment redefining how firms produce and deliver services, according to a new study by CPA Trendlines Research.

MORE Tax and Accounting Wages Hit Record Highs | Show Us the Money! Accountants Are Making More | Chris Vanover: Audit, Now with 100% Less Misery | The Disruptors | Gen AI in Accounting: Epic Transformation, or Overheated Hype? | AI Will Steal Your Job. And That’s a Good Thing | Accounting ARC | Steve Evans: Why Traditional Hiring Methods Fail | The Disruptors

U.S. firms are scaling back staff-level roles, favoring automation and offshore operations. Generative AI and cloud platforms now perform tasks once handled by entry-level staff, including reconciliations, bookkeeping, and basic tax prep. Simultaneously, more firms are offloading transactional services to overseas teams, particularly in India, in response to domestic labor shortages and cost containment efforts.

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Can DOGE and Palantir Fix the IRS with a ‘Mega API’?

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And what about data security and privacy?

By CPA Trendlines Research

The Internal Revenue Service is developing a Unified API Layer intended to consolidate access across its fractured legacy systems, a move that could transform the agency—if executed with transparency, speed, and user needs in mind.

MORE IRS | Brace Yourself: IRS 25% Staff Cuts Mean Big Trouble for Tax Pros and Clients | What to Watch in the One Big Beautiful Bill |IRS’s Big Annual Report: Already Out of Date as Agency Grapples with Chaos and Cuts | Busy Season Barometer Stats: Who’s Responding and How They’re Doing | Tax Season Faceplant: Accountants Overrun by Late Chaos

The project gained momentum–and sparked controversy–this year with the Department of Government Efficiency and Palantir Technologies aiming to build a comprehensive API system.

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Five Million IRS Refunds Delayed by Staff Cuts

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Still, better than 21 million in 2022 pandemic.

By CPA Trendlines Research

2025 Filing Season by the Numbers
Individual Returns Received 140.6 million
Refunds Issued 86.1 million
Total Refund Dollars $253 billion
Average Refund $2,942

Issuing $49 billion more in refunds than last year, the Internal Revenue Service processed over $253 billion in refunds during the 2025 filing season, with 86.1 million refunds issued and an average check of $2,942, according to the National Taxpayer Advocate’s 2026 Objectives Report to Congress.

MORE IRS | Brace Yourself: IRS 25% Staff Cuts Mean Big Trouble for Tax Pros and Clients | What to Watch in the One Big Beautiful Bill |IRS’s Big Annual Report: Already Out of Date as Agency Grapples with Chaos and Cuts | Busy Season Barometer Stats: Who’s Responding and How They’re Doing | Tax Season Faceplant: Accountants Overrun by Late Chaos

In 2022, the IRS faced a substantial backlog, with over 21 million delayed refunds, primarily due to pandemic-related challenges and a surge in paper filings. By 2023, improvements in processing systems and staffing helped reduce the backlog to approximately 1.9 million delayed refunds. However, in 2025, delayed refunds rose again to over 5 million, slowed by headline-making staff cuts and an uptick in identity theft cases requiring additional verification.

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IRS Phone Stats Improve—Unless You’re a Tax Pro

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What “Priority Service”? Only 61 percent of practitioner calls get through.

IRS Phone Line
Level of Service
Accounts Management
87%
Practitioner Priority Service
61%
Installment Agreement / Balance Due
35%
Identity Theft
29%
Critical support lines remain overwhelmed.

By CPA Trendlines Research

The Internal Revenue Service reports significant improvements in its phone service, but the gains mask critical shortfalls in other high-demand lines, frustrating taxpayers and practitioners alike.

MORE IRS | Brace Yourself: IRS 25% Staff Cuts Mean Big Trouble for Tax Pros and Clients | What to Watch in the One Big Beautiful Bill |IRS’s Big Annual Report: Already Out of Date as Agency Grapples with Chaos and Cuts | Busy Season Barometer Stats: Who’s Responding and How They’re Doing | Tax Season Faceplant: Accountants Overrun by Late Chaos

Despite improvements in certain areas, such as the Accounts Management lines achieving an 87 percent Level of Service with average wait times dropping to 3 minutes, other critical lines experienced significantly lower service levels. For instance, the Identity Theft line had an LOS of just 29 percent, and the Installment Agreement/Balance Due line stood at 35 percent.

However, performance plummets for other phone lines. The Level of Service on the Identity Theft line was just 29 percent, and on the Installment Agreement/Balance Due line, it was 35 percent.

The Practitioner Priority Service line, heavily used by professionals, managed just 61 percent, well below the standard for acceptable support.

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‘Kryptonite:’ IRS Buried under 8 Million Paper Returns

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2025 season leaves 8.2 million unprocessed returns and a backlog of 750,000 correspondence cases.

Return Type
Scanned by April 18
Form 1040
~1%
Form 940
~9%
Form 941
~13.5%
Far behind digital processing goals.

By CPA Trendlines Research

Despite modernization efforts, the IRS is drowning in paper, which the National Taxpayer Advocate calls the agency’s “kryptonite.”

MORE Tax | Brace Yourself: IRS 25% Staff Cuts Mean Big Trouble for Tax Pros and Clients | What to Watch in the One Big Beautiful Bill  | IRS’s Big Annual Report: Already Out of Date as Agency Grapples with Chaos and Cuts | Busy Season Barometer Stats: Who’s Responding and How They’re Doing | Accountants Reporting a Pretty Good Year | Tax Season Faceplant: Accountants Overrun by Late Chaos

During the 2025 filing season, the IRS scanned fewer than 1 percent of paper-filed Forms 1040, falling drastically short of its Paperless Processing Initiative goals. This continuing reliance on paper adds months to the processing cycle. In addition to return delays, it clogs the system for identity theft resolution, amended returns, and refund claims, each requiring manual review. For tax professionals, the paper problem means longer timelines, more uncertainty, and higher support costs.

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