TAX SEASON

Ten Tax Issues That Add New Revenue

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Plus four “how much” questions you can put numbers to.

By Ed Mendlowitz
How to Build a Stronger Tax Practice

As you see each tax prep client you should keep a list of additional services you can offer them. Also, continue this list when you review each return.

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I prepare a list of follow-up items during a tax season on my Microsoft Outlook task list. These items are entered as the issue or idea arises. It is simple, quick and very satisfying. The next job will be to make the time to follow up with the client, and do your “good deed.”
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Four Ways to Identify Candidates for Cross-Selling

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https://cpatrendlines.com/2016/06/11/adopt-a-marketing-mindset/

Adopt a marketing mindset.

By Ed Mendlowitz

The average tax return client thinks of accountants as being mainly involved in taxes. Also, an accounting firm’s largest volume of clients is usually for tax return services. Therefore, a good part of the public image of your firm must come from the tax department.

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The tax department must be involved in:

  • strengthening the firm’s brand and name recognition,
  • getting publicity and
  • introducing tax return clients to additional services.

Unfortunately, many accounting firms provide very little guidance or training in this area.

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It’s Time to Start Marketing for Next Tax Season

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Your ideas are fresh now.

By Ed Mendlowitz
Tax Season Opportunity Guide

Marketing takes many forms. Further, many accountants are not trained in marketing. I also know that while most CPAs want more business, they are too busy with what they have to be actively seeking new business. Additionally, marketing can be external, internal or retentive.

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External is where new clients are solicited. That takes effort, ingenuity, time and maybe even some money.
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Tax Season Leaves Accountants Drained, Disappointed

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The 30-point swing: Accountants close the season feeling slightly negative, at minus 1.8, a collapse of more than 30 points.

The Busy Season Barometer Shows Exactly When—and Why.

By CPA Trendlines

After starting near historic highs, sentiment among tax professionals fell more than 30 points by April, as workload, client behavior and system failures overwhelmed expectations.

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The 2026 tax season began with confidence.

By December, sentiment among tax professionals had climbed to a positive 29.8—the strongest reading in the CPA Trendlines Busy Season Barometer cycle. A majority expected better conditions. Few anticipated what came next.

By April, that optimism had vanished.

Accountant attitudes closed the season slightly negative, around -1 to -1.8, marking a swing of more than 30 points in four months.

It was one of the sharpest same-season reversals in the Barometer’s 24-year history, and it followed a pattern practitioners have seen before: expectations rising in the fall, then breaking under the weight of the season itself.

The difference in 2026 was the speed—and the causes.

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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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