The Accounting Industry in 2025 - Matt’s Thoughts
- Lauren Degler
- Mar 1, 2025
- 2 min read
The accounting industry is changing. The business model where clients walk into an office with a pile of tax forms and leave with a physical copy of their return is over.
When shopping around for a tax preparer, it is important to know that TurboTax, an important player in the rapidly changing tax preparation experience, charges over $1,000 for their Full-Service Business returns.
If you compare this level of service with what you get from your CPA (who took 150 hours of college credits, likely ending in a Master’s degree, survived 4 of the most difficult professional exams, and likely started their career at a large public accounting firm gaining massively valuable experience), you’re probably getting the deal of a lifetime.
According to the AICPA, 75% of today’s public accounting CPAs will retire in the next 15 years. This coupled with a massive pipeline issue for accounting jobs means two things to me:
“Simple and Straightforward" taxes SHOULD be done by an automated tax service like TurboTax, and
The service is highly valuable, and will become even more so, since even the TurboTax version of a business tax return starts above $1,000.
To my peer group of firm owners, you’ve got to work on value-add projects and charge appropriately for the results. Keeping your prices below TurboTax is like trying to operate a Blockbuster in 2013.
To the clients and taxpayers out there, be proactive with delivering information. By waiting until April every year, you are playing a key role in sinking the “small accounting firm” by compressing the workload for a full year into two weeks (and sometimes less). If you value your relationship, it is important to nurture that and be reasonable with your expectations on services and pricing.
