SURVEYS & RESEARCH

Busy Season 2026: IRS Problems, Staffing Issues and Client Wrangling Emerge as Top Pressures

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IRS dysfunction replaces OBBBA as top concern.

On the front lines (clockwise from top left): Woodard, Dienhart, Volk, Stitely, Tejero, Brady, Svihla.

By CPA Trendlines

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With only a week to go before the opening of filing season 2026, tax practitioners are focusing on IRS dysfunction as their biggest potential problem this year

And no wonder. The agency was already chronically underfunded, buried under a mountain of overdue paperwork, and crippled by ancient computer systems when it lost 25% of its workforce in early 2025.

JOIN the Busy Season Barometer survey here.

MORE TAX, PRICING, and THE 2026 OUTLOOK

Today 63% of tax professionals say a beleaguered IRS poses the single biggest risk to this year’s tax season, up from 54% just a couple of months ago, according to the CPA Trendlines Busy Season Barometer.

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How Private Equity Created $200 Billion in New Riches for CPAs

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The math is simple, even if the implications are not.

By CPA Trendlines

For decades, the value of a CPA firm was constrained by one simple fact: partners had to buy each other out with their own money. That reality imposed discipline, but it also capped valuation. Firms were priced to be affordable, not aspirational.

That changed when private equity arrived.

MORE Private Equity

Over the past five years, private equity funding has fundamentally altered how CPA firms are valued — not by changing what firms do, but by changing how the market prices scale, recurring revenue and growth potential. The result has been a sharp, uneven reset in firm values, with some practices worth 2 to 4 times what similar firms would have commanded just a few years earlier.

Before private equity entered the market, the top 500 CPA firms, which generate roughly $146 billion in annual net revenue, would have been valued at roughly $170 billion using traditional pricing norms. Applying today’s private-equity-driven revenue multiples implies a total enterprise value of more than $400 billion — a valuation reset of more than $200 billion without any change in underlying revenue. Even the smallest firms may rise with the tide. The 500th largest firm runs about $6 million a year.

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Busy Season 2026: How Ready Are You? It Depends

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The answers track firm size and practice focus.

On the front lines (clockwise from top left): Winke, Sosinski, D’Angelo, Parent, Kaplow, Gehring

By CPA Trendlines Research

Across the profession, accountants heading into the 2026 Busy Season are not sounding alarms, nor are they celebrating breakthroughs. Instead, they are settling into a steady, almost restrained confidence.

JOIN the Busy Season Barometer survey here.

MORE TAX, PRICING, and THE 2026 OUTLOOK

The latest Busy Season Barometer reveals that firms’ sense of readiness bears a striking resemblance to where they stood a year ago. For some, this signals resilience. For others, it signals stagnation. The portrait that emerges is a profession caught between incremental improvements and persistent operational friction.

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Gallup: Accountants Still Trusted, but on Thinning Ice

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New honesty and ethics ratings place accountants near historic lows.

Accountants rank seventh out of 21 professions measured by Gallup, trailing all healthcare professions and teachers, and clustering near other mid-tier trust occupations. Source: Gallup, December 2025.
Accountants rank seventh out of 21 professions measured by Gallup, trailing all healthcare professions and teachers, and clustering near other mid-tier trust occupations.

By CPA Trendlines

Accountants remain among the more trusted professions in American life — but barely, and increasingly precariously.

In Gallup’s newest Honesty and Ethics of Professions survey, only 35% of Americans rate accountants’ honesty and ethical standards as “very high” or “high.” That places the profession in the middle tier of public esteem and, according to Gallup, statistically close to its lowest point since the polling series began in 1976.

MORE Accounting Industry Buoyed by Positive Image | Gallup: Accountants Recover Pre-Enron Reputations | Gallup: Accountants ‘Top-Rated’ for Honesty, Ethics | Gallup: Accountants’ Reputations Unsullied by Financial Debacles | Are CPAs Fretting Too Much? | Gallup: Accounting Reputation in Recovery | Accounting’s Reputation Hits 14-year High

The new poll comes with a broader warning label: Americans’ ethics ratings have fallen across many occupations, and the average across Gallup’s core set of professions has slid to a historic low. Accountants are not isolated — but they are exposed. Their work is built on trust, and their public standing appears to be eroding at the exact moment the profession is asking clients and regulators to accept more complex roles for CPAs, including AI-enabled advisory services, outsourced finance, and expanded assurance responsibilities.

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