Burnett Says Maybe — If You Know the Rules. By CPA Trendlines Research LIVE WEBINAR: Is AI Fit for Tax? with Bradley Burnet Mon, Dec. 29. Register | Learn more
Not establishing uniform procedures is bad business and unnecessarily consumes part of your life. Consistency in performance reduces work and review time and creates a greater reliance on the staff people. READ MORE →
“Tax Season Readiness” webinar offers quick, practical strategies to help firms prepare for the hectic demands of the coming months. By CPA Trendlines
If you like Accounting ARC, you’re going to love what’s happening Dec. 10!
Heading into 2026, problems from the past several filing seasons are still unresolved.
By CPA Trendlines Research
The coming 2026 filing season is shaping up to be another high-stakes test of the Internal Revenue Service’s capacity to serve taxpayers and practitioners, with new reports from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration offering an unusually candid look at the agency’s most vulnerable operational seams.
Taken together, the findings forecast a filing season characterized by incremental improvements in training but overshadowed by enduring structural constraints in telephone service, submission processing, identity verification, and staffing.
Busy season 2026 clouded by regulatory shifts and client pressures.
Ready or Not: Less than half are ahead of last year’s preparation for Tax Season 2026. On the Front Lines: Clockwise from top left, Cicero, Saul, Krueger
By CPA Trendlines Research
Fewer than half of accounting firm leaders report entering the 2026 busy season in better shape than a year ago, according to the new CPA Trendlines Busy Season Barometer.
The readiness gap, evident across firm sizes and specialties, sets the tone for a season overshadowed by heightened concerns about tax law changes and mounting pressure on margins.
Key Players in Tax Planning: Clockwise from top left, Meyer, Beastrom, Argue, Alarie, Ali, Costanz
Once an add-on service for high-net-worth clients, tax planning is moving to center stage, powered by artificial intelligence and the profession’s accelerating shift to advisory from compliance.
Fresh evidence comes from TaxPlanIQ’s new partnerships with Liberty Tax and Elite Resource Team, which extend TaxPlanIQ’s reach from boutique firms to thousands of retail outlets and nationwide advisory networks. The deals show artificial intelligence transforming accountants’ handling of tax planning, strategy, and client communication.
“I can’t imagine a better thing to do than support accountants in that endeavor,” says Jackie Meyer, founder of TaxPlanIQ and CPA Trendlines contributor, positioning her company’s mission personally. TaxPlanIQ’s pitches ease of use. Just upload a 1040, surface strategies, and deliver a branded proposal that quantifies return on investment.
With Liberty Tax, the reach is in the mass market. With ERT, the audience is higher-value clients served by coordinated advisory teams. TaxPlanIQ claims $5 billion saved by clients identified through its system. More than 1,200 firms already use the platform, before the new partnerships,
Reaching for a $2.5 billion prize
The promise of the next evolution of tax planning is enticing, and the field is becoming more competitive by the month. The tax planning software market is projected to grow at a rate of 8% to 13% annually from 2026 to 2033, with the total market size expected to surpass $2.5 billion globally and $25 billion for the broader online tax software segment.
Help entrepreneurial clients use government programs to lower tax bills while creating jobs and wealth.
By Blake Christian
As many CPAs know, a wide variety of federal and state tax credits and other incentives are readily available but often overlooked by businesses and their tax advisors.
While the vast majority of tax planning efforts are focused on the timing of taxable income and tax-deductible items (temporary or timing differences), there are literally hundreds of federal tax incentives (permanent differences) that encourage taxpayers to invest in certain equipment, hire certain types of employees, operate in certain regions or invest in certain industries. READ MORE →
TaxDome unveils AI-driven workflow to Challenge Aiwyn, Canopy, Karbon.
Workflow warriors: Juno’s Haase, left, and TaxDome’s Radzinsky
By CPA Trendlines Research
TaxDome and Juno are launching the accounting industry’s first fully integrated, end-to-end tax workflow solution, an automation-powered platform uniting proposal to payment under a single login.
The rollout lands at a pivotal moment in a fiercely competitive practice management software market, where venture capital, artificial intelligence and consolidation are redrawing the digital map for tax and accounting firms.
The IRS’s Unified API Layer may be the cornerstone of a digital-first tax administration, even as key voices inside and outside the agency raise red flags about transparency, security, and oversight.
The partnership with the tech industry is triggering a new kind of scrutiny, not over software performance, but civil liberties. At the center of that concern is Palantir Technologies, a data analytics company that confirms it will work with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency and the IRS on the API infrastructure.READ MORE →
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.
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.
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.
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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