Busy Season Barometer

Barometer: Firms Brace for a Tough Tax Season

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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.

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MORE Tax Practice | TaxPlanIQ Escalates the Battle in Tax Planning Software | How TaxDome and Juno Just Changed the Tax Tech Game | DOGE, Palantir and the IRS: What Could Go Wrong? | Five Million IRS Refunds Delayed by Staff Cuts | IRS Phone Stats Improve—Unless You’re a Tax Pro | ‘Kryptonite:’ IRS Buried under 8 Million Paper Returns | Mounting Delays Undermine Public Trust in IRS Refund Process | Brace Yourself: IRS 25% Staff Cuts Mean Big Trouble for Tax Pros and Clients

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.

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DOGE, Palantir and the IRS: What Could Go Wrong?

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Palantir and the IRS: Musk, left, Thiel, right

 

Who’s watching the IRS code?

By CPA Trendlines Research

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.

MORE Tax | Mounting Delays Undermine Public Trust in IRS Refund Process | Brace Yourself: IRS 25% Staff Cuts Mean Big Trouble for Tax Pros and Clients | What to Watch in the One Big Beautiful Bill  | IRS’s Big Annual Report: Already Out of Date as Agency Grapples with Chaos and Cuts | Busy Season Barometer Stats: Who’s Responding and How They’re Doing | Accountants Reporting a Pretty Good Year | Tax Season Faceplant: Accountants Overrun by Late Chaos

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 →

Can DOGE and Palantir Fix the IRS with a ‘Mega API’?

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And what about data security and privacy?

By CPA Trendlines Research

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.

MORE IRS | Brace Yourself: IRS 25% Staff Cuts Mean Big Trouble for Tax Pros and Clients | What to Watch in the One Big Beautiful Bill |IRS’s Big Annual Report: Already Out of Date as Agency Grapples with Chaos and Cuts | Busy Season Barometer Stats: Who’s Responding and How They’re Doing | Tax Season Faceplant: Accountants Overrun by Late Chaos

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.

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Five Million IRS Refunds Delayed by Staff Cuts

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Still, better than 21 million in 2022 pandemic.

By CPA Trendlines Research

2025 Filing Season by the Numbers
Individual Returns Received 140.6 million
Refunds Issued 86.1 million
Total Refund Dollars $253 billion
Average Refund $2,942

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.

MORE IRS | Brace Yourself: IRS 25% Staff Cuts Mean Big Trouble for Tax Pros and Clients | What to Watch in the One Big Beautiful Bill |IRS’s Big Annual Report: Already Out of Date as Agency Grapples with Chaos and Cuts | Busy Season Barometer Stats: Who’s Responding and How They’re Doing | Tax Season Faceplant: Accountants Overrun by Late Chaos

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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What Other Tax Pros Want to Know About You

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Group of businesspeople hiding their faces behind question mark signs at office

What our Busy Season Barometer didn’t ask (but should have).

By CPA Trendlines Research

The annual CPA Trendlines Busy Season Barometer is one of the most widely researched and respected surveys of trends at accounting firms across the nation.

MORE Barometer: Busy Season Barometer Stats: Who’s Responding and How They’re Doing | Your Colleagues Give Their Best Advice for Clients | Pro Services, Tech and Mining Sectors Most Likely to Thrive | Accountants See a Host of Woes for Businesses | Top Three Issues for Business: Tariffs, Taxes and Inflation | Accountants Reporting a Pretty Good Year | Concerns Take Curious Shifts as Tax Season Closes | Tax Season Faceplant: Accountants Overrun by Late Chaos | Accountants Turn Negative Amid Tariffs, Trade, Uncertainty | What CPA Firms Could Do Better | SURVEY: Which Client Industries Will Grow This Year | Tax Preparers Share Advice for Your Clients | Staffing, Tech, Prices Top Tax Pros’ Concerns | Tax Pros Gear Up for a Better Busy Season | Tax Season 2025 Begins. Ready or Not.
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As you know if you’re one of the hundreds of Barometer respondents, the survey looks for a wide range of hard data and subjective opinions. Among them:

  • How firms are handling the current tax season
  • What their chief concerns are
  • Success metrics on client lists, revenues, profits and extensions

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