Today's Features
ACCOUNTING ARC

OCR, Research Bots & Meeting Assistants: What Actually Helps Now | ARC

Firms use AI, planning, and “hope” to make tax season more manageable.

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Accounting ARC
With Liz Mason, Byron Patrick, and Donny Shimamoto
Center for Accounting Transformation

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

As firms head into tax season, the hosts of Accounting ARC make a case for lowering the temperature — and the workload — with practical tech choices, proactive planning and a stronger focus on people.

MORE Accounting ARC: 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 | Free Speech Is a Right; Respect Is a Responsibility | Cash Bags, Casinos & Audits: How First Jobs Shape Us | Gen Z Redefines Careers | Bootleggers, Baptitsts & CPAs: Rethinking Licensure

In a special Tax Season Readiness episode, Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA; joins co-hosts Liz Mason, CPA; and Byron Patrick, CPA.CITP, CGMA; to preview new tax platform research, spotlight emerging AI tools and talk candidly about what helps teams sustain momentum from January through April.

Shimamoto, founder and managing director of IntrapriseTechKnowlogies LLC and founder and inspiration architect for the Center for Accounting Transformation, sets the tone early. He says he intentionally avoids calling it “busy season,” noting that practitioners tell him the upcoming cycle may feel lighter than the past few years. The conversation that follows keeps returning to the same core question: What, specifically, helps firms reduce friction before deadlines hit?

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BUSY SEASON MANAGEMENT

Busy Season 2026: How Ready Are You? It Depends

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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MARKETING & SALES

Sixteen Marketing Activities to Try

Maybe you can help a client at the same time.

By August Aquila
MAX: Maximize Productivity, Profitability and Client Retention

Just in case you have run out of marketing ideas, what follows is a laundry list of activities for your consideration. Any marketing activity you undertake needs to start with an understanding of your market, and then develop the activity around those needs. Marketing is about getting in front of your targets so that they can see how much you can help them.

MORE by August J. Aquila
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Create your activities around this concept: “I will provide my clients and prospects with valuable information in order to help them determine that I (or my firm) can best solve their problems and satisfy their needs.”
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GROWTH STRATEGIES

Epp and Schrock: Firms that Listen Keep Their People | MOVE Like This

Paychecks and perks are no longer enough to retain talent.

This is a preview. The complete 1-hour video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first available exclusively to PRO Members | Go PRO here
Sponsored by The Balanced Millionaire: The Advisor Edition by Dr. Jackie Meyer | See Today’s Special Offer

Subscribe to CPA Trendlines Research podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google/YouTube, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music, Audible, Player FM, Audacy, RSS.
Build a 7-figure firm in just 4 hours a week!

MOVE Like This
With Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk
For CPA Trendlines Research

In this episode of MOVE Like This, Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk sits down with Kristi Epp, a tax partner, and Amber Schrock, an advisory partner and Las Vegas market leader at Frazier & Deeter, explore how the accounting profession is evolving and how firm leaders can better support their people. Both guests share their career journeys and how they found long-term professional homes at the firm, emphasizing mentorship, growth opportunities, and a culture that values people as much as performance. 

MORE MOVE

Epp and Schrock note that the past five years, particularly the post-COVID period, have fundamentally reshaped accounting. Remote work, automation, and regulatory complexity are now the norm, while consolidation and private equity activity are accelerating change across the profession. Frazier & Deeter’s recent growth initiatives, including acquisitions, reflect this shifting landscape and the need for firms to think differently about scale, talent, and integration.  READ MORE →

CHARTS & GRAPHS

Gallup: Accountants Still Trusted, but on Thinning Ice

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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