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Five Actions to Reduce Tax Season Stress and Enhance Firm Value

February 12, 2026

By Ira Rosenbloom, CPA (Inactive)

At CPA firms everywhere, busy season takes stress to the highest levels. So, this is a great time to think about actions that will make your business run more efficiently, become more appealing for talent attraction and retention, and become more financially rewarding.

Here are five actions that will make life better for tax season and beyond.

  1. Leverage compliance. Technology and automation are making compliance less impressive to clients and likely creating boredom in segments of your team. Create a menu of expanded tax and business consulting services and require every partner to generate a specific percentage of fees in those expanded areas. Start with 10%. You will be spending significant time with clients during busy season, so plant the seeds now and include your staff in the process.
  2. Live a performance-based lifestyle. Set billed-out production standards for all producers and capture them by time cycles: January through April, May through August, and September through December. Be sure to stress profit margins to the engagement managers and reward them for strong performance. Gratification starts with feeling that time was put to good use and that expectations were met and preferably exceeded.
  3. Less is more. Doing more for fewer clients is a win for everyone. Client satisfaction rises with more attention, so there’s less disappointment to manage. Staff and partners have fewer clients to monitor, easing the tension. Fees rise as skills become more advanced and more valuable.
  4. Capture value. CPAs are great at telling their clients about handling overruns and pushing value, yet they tend to be deaf to their own words. Have a proven system to monitor engagement budgets and task commitments. Diligently bill for extras—or stop working and pass things back to clients. Minimum fees must be standard for every kind of engagement, another lesson preached to clients but not always heeded.
  5. Cater to top clients. All firms rely on strong client satisfaction. The more authentic and in-depth your client input is, the better the integrity of the satisfaction barometer. Surveys and interviews of clients should be compiled with the metrics available for analysis for all parties at the M&A table.

Selectivity in client acceptance, discipline in services provided, and catering to client expectations for clients that meet your profile are the outcomes of these five recommendations. Working smarter for enhanced value and motivating your team to collaborate on that smart work with enhanced compensation and benefits creates a very appealing firm 365 days a year.