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Accounting

Accounting in 2025: The year ahead in numbers

ByDaniel Hood
December 20, 2024 2:34 PM

With 2025 almost upon us, it's worth thinking about what the new year will bring, and what accounting firms expect their next 12 months to look like.

With that in mind, Accounting Today conducted its annual Year Ahead survey in the late fall to find out firms' expectations for 2025, including their growth expectations, their hiring plans, their growth expectations, how they think tax season will play out and much more. The overall theme: Thing are going well, but there are elements of friction holding them back, particularly when it comes to moving to more of a focus on advisory services.

You can see the full report here; a selection of key data points are presented below.


The overwhelming majority of firms (87%) expect tax season in 2025 will be better or the same as tax season in 2024, which is roughly the same as what they expected going into the beginning of this year — but this year's tax season was reportedly easier than 2023's, so that means improved expectations all around.

Overall, firms are going into 2025 with expectations of revenue growth that are as strong as they were going into 2024, though larger firms were more likely to predict double-digit growth, and smaller firms were more likely to predict flat or declining growth.

Firms continue to report that they expect to spend more time on advisory services (and, to a lesser extent, compliance work); in 2023, they reported similar hopes.

But despite having reported a desire to growth advisory services, they actually spent less time there in 2024 than they did in 2023, suggesting that growing demand for compliance services is holding them back.

The further in the past the COVID pandemic recedes, the more firms are leaning toward having employees in the office full time or in hybrid work environments, as opposed to being fully remote.

What's more, a growing majority of firms are reporting that they won't hire any remote employees at all, despite the ongoing staffing shortage.

Overall, roughly half of firms expect to do some hiring in 2025, the same percentage as last year — but with a key difference that's noted in the next chart.

While half of firms are expecting to hire in 2025, they're expecting to hire about half as many people as they planned to in 2024.

Technology continues to be a major portion of accounting firm spending, with mean tech spending taking up 21% of budgets.

And while the percentage of firms expecting to increase their tech spending has held steady at half for the previous two years, it's jumping to 60% for 2025, suggesting a more widespread expectation of higher IT costs.

Technology is top of mind for many smaller firms, both in terms of keeping up with the pace of change and making sure their data is secure; their other top concern is in staying up to date on legislative and regulatory change — a perennial concern of accountants.

For midsized firms, talent is by far their strongest concern, followed by keeping up with regulatory and technological change.

Nothing worries large firms anywhere near as much as the ongoing struggle for staff.
Daniel Hood
Editor-in-chief, Accounting Today
Accounting Practice management Tax Tax season
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