Survey: Scrap it and start over.
By CPA Trendlines Research
You can do something. Join more CPAs, Enrolled Agents, financial planners and other tax practitioners in contributing opinions and ideas. Join the Survey; Get the Results
Tax pros handling 54.3% of e-filings, down 2 points from year ago.
By Beth Bellor
CPA Trendlines Research
The pace of 2019 remains behind that of 2018 on most counts as the tax season stumbles to a close.
MORE: Who’d Like a Friend in the IRS? | Hello, IRS? Anybody Home? | Tax Pro E-Filing Off 2.7% from Last Year’s Pace | Tax Professionals File 38 Million Returns | Refunds Still Up, but Only by 0.7%
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The IRS had received 92.9 million individual income tax returns as of the week ending March 29, the last data available, down 1.4 percent from the same period last year. It had processed 90.3 million returns, down 2 percent.
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Trump proposes 5% boost to the IRS budget, reversing years of cutbacks and declines.
BUSY SEASON BAROMETER
TODAY’S BONUS QUESTION: What are firms learning from Tax Season 2019, that they’ll apply in 2020?
Join the Survey. Get the Results.
By CPA Trendlines Research
After many years of increasing austerity—and some would say crippling austerity—the IRS may have bottomed out. Despite broad cuts proposed in the overall 2020 federal budget, President Trump has included an additional $362 million—a five percent increase—for the agency that gathers the funds that keep the United States in business.
MORE BUSY SEASON: Tax Season Funnies: April Fool Is When? | Wanna Change the Tax World? | How the IRS Hides Its Legal Decisions | Tax Season 2019 Serves Up a Taste of the Future | The Biggest Reason Fraudsters Run Rings around the IRS | The IRS Free-File Flop | Protect Your Clients’ Assets | The Demise of Schedule A? | Tammy’s Tale of Tax Season Tardiness | How Effective Project Management Makes Your Life Easier | Survey: Busy Season Goes Sour | When Clients Cash Out: Four Smart Financial Moves
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If Congress approves the budget as proposed (and that’s bound to be an exciting story), the IRS can begin—just begin—to recover some of what has lost over the last decade or so.
Average refunds down 1%.
By Beth Bellor
“Thirty percent of tax services will be obsolete in three years.”
Robert Hockensmith talks about Tax Season 2019 on local TV news in Phoenix.
By CPA Trendlines Research
This year’s tax season is giving tax preparers a taste of the future—a future where tax returns are both simpler and more complex.
According to data streaming into the CPA Trendlines Busy Season Barometer survey, tax practitioners are just beginning to get a handle on the radical changes wrought by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act—not just the technical changes to the tax code but the resulting changes to the business of tax preparation.
MORE: The Biggest Reason Fraudsters Run Rings around the IRS | The Big Free-File Flop | The Demise of Schedule A? | Refunds Still Up, but Only by 0.7% | Survey: Busy Season Goes Sour | Tax Refunds Up 1.7% | Lessons Learned: How the Federal Shutdown Hit Busy Season 2019 | Tax Refund Fury Roils Busy Season | Taxpayer Advocate Slams Congress over Funding
Robert F. Hockensmith, CPA, EA, in Phoenix, Ariz., and a website site notably named AZMoneyGuy.com, offers a variety of tax and non-tax services, sums it up thus: “Thirty percent of tax preparation will be obsolete in three years. Clients will want advice and tax resolution more than preparation for 50 percent of taxpayers. And only 50 percent of all tax returns will be prepared by professional tax preparers.”