OUTLOOK & ANALYSIS

21 Hard-Earned Lessons from Tax Season 2026

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And What 20 Years of Data Say Comes Next

By CPA Trendlines Research

There is a ritual to tax season. It begins with anticipation dressed as control.

Practitioners tally the risks — the IRS, the law, the clients who will not deliver on time — and tell themselves this year will be different. Then the season starts. And it isn’t.

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The CPA Trendlines Busy Season Barometer tracks that ritual across waves of surveys from September 2025 through April 2026 with more than 300 respondents.

The data show not a profession in crisis, but a profession under stress. Where pressures no longer arrive one at a time but stack up on each other. Where external shocks have been absorbed, and internal limits have come into view.

Tax season is full of noise, chaos and confusion. But a close look at the Busy Season Barometer from this year – and going back more than 20 years – can cut through the fog for the patterns, trends, insights and, most of all, the tough lessons learned.

Tax season 2026 gives us at least 21 essential takeaways.

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Tax Prep Billing Rates Lift Busy Season 2026

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Busy Season 2026 sets up a year of tough decisions about monumental transformations.

Busy Season 2026: Billing rates for tax prep and planning are increasing at a 10.8% year-over-year rate, rushing past the average tax and accounting fee increase of 4.5%.

By CPA Trendlines

Busy Season 2026: Tax professionals struggle to improve systems and metrics, with “much worse” beating “much better” by three to one.

As tax season 2026 comes to a close, new data show that price hikes for tax prep and planning are running at double-digit rates, even as billing rates for most other accounting services are flattening out, according to new CPA Trendlines research in conjunction with the annual Busy Season Barometer.

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Tax practitioners are finishing the season as a divided profession, with fewer than 6% reporting a “much better” year, against almost three times that many reporting a “much worse” year.

Coming out of tax season, many firms are facing major decisions in the coming months driven by new artificial intelligence investments, a fundamental shift in staffing models, and private equity disruptions.

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Red Flag Warning: Accountants Lose Faith in the Economic Outlook

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A turn for the worse: Accountants’ outlook on the economy takes a tumble with the end of busy season. (CPA Trendlines Busy Season Barometer)

Two-thirds now see tough times ahead.

By CPA Trendlines Research

After processing hundreds, if not thousands, of tax returns for wage earners and small business owners, U.S. accountants’ confidence in the nation’s economy is in a state of collapse, according to the latest CPA Trendlines Busy Season Barometer.

While practitioners entered the winter with relatively stable expectations, the reality of “busy season”—which provides a granular look at the financial health of American businesses—has apparently triggered a sharp reversal.

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With the end of the 2026 filing cycle, roughly two-thirds of CPAs are predicting that national business conditions will worsen over the next 12 to 18 months, a startling increase from the beginning of the cycle, when only half held a negative outlook. Conversely, the number of optimists dwindled to about 18%, down from nearly 30 points from earlier in the year.

“We’re looking at higher costs and too much uncertainty for our small-business clients,” one sole proprietor noted in the survey, shifting his rating to “much worse.”

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Tipping Point: Accountants Scramble for AI-Enhanced Tax, GL, and Workflow Apps

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New workflow systems expected to cut labor problems and shore up profit margins.

Coming out of tax season, more than 55% of firms are looking for new artificial intelligence solutions, up 10 points from before the season. The scramble for practice management and workflow solutions has almost doubled. (CPA Trendlines Research)

By CPA Trendlines Research

The CPA Trendlines Busy Season Barometer shows accounting firms are already planning changes to their technology and workflows, aiming to address the same pressures that defined this year’s busy season.

The research points to a profession broadly aligned with what needs to change, but much less aligned with how quickly those changes can be put into practice.


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Firms across the spectrum, whether reporting a better or worse tax season, identify similar priorities: improving efficiency, reducing manual work and making better use of technology.

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 Busy Season 2026: Clients, Pricing, Staffing… CRUNCH

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CPA Trendlines Busy Season Barometer: Modest Gains, Mixed Outlook, Cautious Tech Upgrades Ahead

Top concerns: “The returns aren’t harder—they’re just later.” (CPA Trendlines Busy Season Barometer)
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By CPA Trendlines Research

The 2026 tax season shows some gradual improvement for certain firms, but most practitioners report conditions that remain largely unchanged from a year ago, according to the latest data from the CPA Trendlines Busy Season Barometer.

For More Busy Season Trends and Strategies: Join the survey. Get the results.

MORE Tax Season 2026

The good news is: 2026 hasn’t turned into the disaster some were expecting with a new tax law and diminished IRS. The bad news is: 2026 is turning into a relatively routine year — without the advances in workflow or the better margins from higher-value services that some were hoping for.

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Inside Tax Season’s Hidden Shift: Same Work, Fewer People, Higher Cost

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And that’s the good news.

Your mileage may vary: The tax and accounting workforce is churning out almost as many returns. But with rising labor costs. Is that a margin squeeze or the firm of the future? (Index = pro-filed tax returns, annualized payrolls, and headcounts)

By CPA Trendlines

New CPA Trendlines Research suggests that the much vaunted promises of AI-enabled efficiencies are still just that – promises.

MORE Tax Season

So far this year, firms are producing even fewer tax returns than at the same time last year, while salaries are increasing.

The problem gets worrisome when you notice that headcounts are flat to down. Or, are these the signs of a new paradigm?

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Geof Brown: The Three Things You Can’t Ignore | Gear Up for Growth

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Illinois CPA Society CEO lays out the three big challenges.

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Gear Up for Growth
With Jean Caragher
For CPA Trendlines

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“What got you to this point is not going to be what gets your firm to its next major milestone,” says Geoffrey Brown, president and CEO of the Illinois CPA Society.

MORE Jean Caragher here | Get her best-selling handbook, The 90-Day Marketing Plan for CPA Firms, here | MORE Gear Up for Growth | MORE CPA Trendlines Streaming Network here

“Be flexible. Be nimble,” he tells Jean Caragher in this episode of Gear Up for Growth. “Surround yourself with the right people and take advantage of opportunities that help you lead into the future.”  READ MORE →

PE Wars: The CPA Platform Economy Is Concentrating Fast

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After hundreds of deals, the data show a gravitational pull toward a handful of buyers now driving the profession’s future.

Five Top Power Players

CPA Trendlines chart showing PE-backed accounting platform power players

CPA Trendlines PE Deal Tracker: Mega-aggregators dominate the money flow as the race tightens between Ascend, Aprio, Crete, Eisner and Ryan. (Data: March 31, 2026)

By CPA Trendlines Research

The frantic pace of deal-making this past March marks a turning point. What had been described as a consolidation phase has matured into something more defined and more consequential: a platform-driven market in which a relatively small number of repeat acquirers are shaping the profession’s future.

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As the first quarter of 2026 closes, the story is no longer simply about transactions. It is about structure. The question has shifted from who is buying whom to which investment models, operating systems, and capital strategies will define the next decade of accounting.

For years, the prevailing narrative held that private equity would democratize the profession. Capital, it was said, would spread broadly across hundreds of firms, opening access to institutional funding that had never before been available. But the data tells a different story.

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Tax Prep Wages and Salaries Hit 4-Year High

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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.

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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..

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The 7.6x Machine: How Grassroots Firms Are Taking Private Equity for a Ride

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Fewer than 200 investors triggered almost 900 acquisitions.

Global issues: 1,052 total firms impacted, 177 direct PE investments, 875 roll-up acquisitions, 7.6× 2025 roll-up multiplier, 4× multiplier growth since 2021.

 

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.

MORE Private Equity | Deal Tracker: PE Platforms Accelerate the Grab for CPA Firms | With Apax Sale, CohnReznick Starts Building a National Platform | Unicorns and Funerals: From the Demise of Botkeeper to the Rise of Basis.ai | Jeremy Dubow: Raising the Bar for Talent | Big 4 Transparency | Twelve Great Reasons to Merge In a Smaller Accounting Firm

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.

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