TAX

Post-Holiday Fatigue Isn’t a Failure; It’s a Signal. | ARC

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Decode your energy signals, redesign your calendar, and stay sharp even when you’re running low.

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Accounting ARC
With Liz Mason and Donny Shimamoto
Center for Accounting Transformation

Build a 7-figure firm in just 4 hours a week!

As the calendar flips and the pace of work accelerates, many accounting professionals find themselves running on fumes. The holidays are over. Travel lingers in the body. Busy season looms. And yet, expectations snap back to full speed almost overnight.

In this Accounting ARC, Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA, and Liz Mason, CPA, take on a topic many professionals quietly struggle with but rarely discuss openly: how to work through fatigue without burning out—or dialing down performance.

MORE Accounting ARC: OCR, Research Bots & Meeting Assistants: What Actually Helps Now | Return Season is the New Stress Test | Small Firms May Have the Biggest Advantage in 2026 | Downgraded: What the DOE Said About Accounting | Savage: Using Your License as a Megaphone |  Baker: Interpreting Pricing Psychology | Don’t Get Fired by Your Own Automation | What Amazon Doesn’t Tell You | Royalties, Residuals, and Reality Checks | ARC-SLC 

Their conversation is refreshingly candid, practical, and grounded in lived experience. And it challenges one of the profession’s most persistent myths: that being tired means you’re doing something wrong.

Both hosts open the episode admitting they are exhausted—but not from overwork. Shimamoto is coming off a stretch of nonstop weekends filled with visitors, events, and travel. Mason is freshly jet-lagged after nearly two weeks in London, balancing client work with museums, family time, and international flights.

The point lands quickly: fatigue doesn’t only come from too much work. It comes from full lives.

And pretending otherwise, they argue, is where professionals get stuck—pushing through exhaustion with guilt instead of strategy.

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Busy Season 2026: Firms Look to Pricing for Growth

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Revenues and client rosters outpace profit gains as firms battle cost pressures.

On the front lines (clockwise from left): Clockwise from left: Hall, Langworthy, Lenz, Kwiecinski, Dickerson

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CPA firms heading into the 2026 tax season expect revenue gains driven primarily by higher prices, not by adding clients, even as a majority anticipate another heavy extension season.

JOIN the Busy Season Barometer survey here.
MORE TAX, PRICING, and THE 2026 OUTLOOK

According to the CPA Trendlines Busy Season Barometer, about 6 in 10 firms expect total revenue to increase this year, while roughly one-third expect revenue to hold steady. Profit expectations trail revenue slightly, a pattern that points to continued cost pressure even as clients and would-be clients clamor for more, and more high-end, services

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Gordon: The Most Powerful Sentence You’ll Learn | The Concierge CPA

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The silver bullet technique can transform messaging and persuasion.

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The Concierge CPA
With Jackie Meyer
For CPA Trendlines

Most accounting professionals do extraordinary work—and still struggle to explain why it matters.

That tension sits at the heart of a standout episode of The Concierge CPA, where host Dr. Jackie Meyer is joined by messaging strategist Neil Gordon for a wide-ranging conversation on persuasion, clarity, and the future of tax advisory in an AI-driven world.

The result is an episode that feels less like a marketing lesson—and more like a wake-up call for tax professionals who know their value but haven’t quite figured out how to communicate it.

More Jackie Meyer

Early in the episode, Meyer names a frustration that resonates across the profession: most tax professionals create real value, yet struggle to articulate it in a way that inspires action.

That gap isn’t about intelligence or effort. It’s about messaging.

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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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Werner: Avoid Tax Surprises for Clients | Quick Tax Tip

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Unexpected tax bills erode trust fast. Most are preventable—if CPAs spot the warning signs early enough.

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Build a 7-figure firm in just 4 hours a week!

Quick Tax Tip
With Art Werner
CPE Today

Surprise tax bills remain one of the most common—and avoidable—sources of client frustration. In most cases, the issue isn’t aggressive planning gone wrong, but passive assumptions left unchecked throughout the year.

Tax attorney Art Werner, JD, points to predictable triggers: income that rises while withholding stays flat, investment activity that isn’t incorporated into estimates, and planning decisions made without coordination across the return.

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Variable income is a frequent culprit. Bonuses, equity compensation, retirement withdrawals, and side-business earnings can easily push clients into higher brackets or trigger phaseouts.

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