Busy Season Barometer

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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Want Better Clients? Raise Your Rates

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portrait of Loren Fogelman
Fogelman
 Loren Fogelman, founder of Business Success Solution, is an expert in pricing strategy and sales for accounting firms. A sought-after keynote speaker, she is continually listed among America’s top-ranked business coaches.

Your fees send a message about your firm.

By Loren Fogelman
The Holistic Guide to Wealth Management

Setting your fees appropriately is one of the primary challenges that accounting professionals face. According to McKinsey, 80 to 90 percent of services are priced too low. Throughout my career, I too have found that most firm owners don’t know how much to charge for their services – and too often they undercharge.

MORE Rory Henry and The Holistic Guide to Wealth Management
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Many firm owners tell me that setting fees can feel like tiptoeing through a pricing minefield. And pricing shouldn’t be taken lightly. This is especially true for wealth management services. The prices you set today will impact your firm’s profit margin as well as your growth for years to come.
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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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Outlook 2026: Accountants Brace for a Rough Economy

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Expect strong demand for tax planning, business advisory and bookkeeping cleanup work. 

By CPA Trendlines Research

The CPA Trendlines Busy Season Barometer indicates that tax and accounting leaders anticipate growth in their own firms, even as they prepare for anxious business clients, persistent inflation, and a policy environment that keeps planning on edge.

MORE Busy Season and 2026 Outlook

BUSY SEASON BAROMETER: Join the survey. Get the results

About half of all accountants in the survey are bracing for a deteriorating economy, with a third expecting rosier scenarios, for a net negative 17.2 percentage points. For small and mid-sized businesses, accountants are at a negative 9.3 points.

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IRS Set for a Turbulent 2026 Season as TIGTA Flags Persistent Weaknesses

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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.

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MORE: Firms Brace for a Tough Tax Season

How smart pros are prepping for tax season:
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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.

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