Research · Lead
FASB standard-setting by the numbers: 12 ASUs issued in 2025 versus 4 in 2024, 18 active projects, and effective dates for ASC 606, 842, 326, and crypto.
From the newsroom
Research
How Americans file: 99.1M refunds worth $324.8B through May 2026, averaging $3,276. E-file at 93.7%, plus refund timing and the inflation-adjusted trend.
Research
4.58M U.S. partnerships cover 30.24M partners. LLCs are 72.7%; finance holds 10.7% of partnerships but 63.5% of pass-through income, per IRS SOI data.
Research
5.27M active S corporations are 76.9% of all U.S. corporations, reporting $763.3B in profit. Returns, income, industry, and shareholders from IRS SOI data.
Research
Accountant pay by state, metro, and role: median wage $81,680 (May 2024). San Jose tops metros; cost-of-living-adjusted, Texas beats NY and California.
The Seven Desks
Software Shootout
The four practice management platforms most CPA firms shortlist in 2026. We ran 30-day trials on real client engagements: workflow fit, mobile reliability, e-sign integration, billing accuracy, and the hidden-cost line items that surface at year two. Pricing ranges from $39 to $129 per user per month.
2026 Comparison
Original Research
We publish original datasets on the accounting profession because the trade press reuses the same numbers from the same sources for years at a time. The PE Roll-Up Tracker catalogues every recapitalization of a CPA firm since 2021 with deal terms. The Audit Firm Rotation Index covers 1,140 SEC registrant auditor changes. The Crypto CPA Market Sizing report estimates $2.4 billion in 2026 fees across 380 firms. Methodology is disclosed on every dataset. Anyone can cite us with attribution.
42
CPA firm PE recapitalizations tracked since 2021
1,140
SEC registrant auditor changes catalogued since 2020
$2.4B
Estimated 2026 crypto CPA market size (380 firms)
From the archive
“The STR may be regarded as a combination of a ledger with some encryption and communication scripts. Or you might regard it as a ledger with an http or email daemon bolted onto it.”
— Todd Boyle, Shared Transaction Repository, 2003
Restored 2026
Twenty-seven essays and software specifications on general ledger architecture and distributed accounting, written between 1997 and 2010. Cited by the Nakamoto Institute, Ian Grigg's iang.org, the Apache Confluence wiki, and the Financial Cryptography blog. Restored at their original URLs to preserve the citation chain that runs from double-entry accounting through triple-entry accounting to Bitcoin.