Sponsored content by IRS Solutions – a 2025 SaaS Awards Success Suite entrant.

By David Stone at IRS Solutions. IRS Solutions were finalists in the ‘Best SaaS Product for Business Productivity’ award at the 2025 SaaS Awards.

The accounting profession is in the middle of a structural transformation. Across the industry, firms are abandoning project-based, crisis-driven engagements in favor of year-round advisory relationships, a recurring service model built on technology, proactive oversight, and deeper client trust. The fastest-growing practice area in accounting, client advisory services (CAS), has delivered double-digit revenue growth for over half a decade by following this playbook to the letter. Tax resolution, one of the profession’s most stubbornly reactive corners, is now arriving at the same inflection point.

The catalyst is IRS transcript monitoring, a capability that, until recently, was little more than a convenience for checking on a resolved case. Today, it’s becoming the infrastructure for an entirely new service model, one that replaces the single-engagement crisis response with ongoing compliance oversight. The firms that adopt it are doing more than adding a feature. They’re rethinking how they engage with the people they serve.

The Crisis Model Was Built for a Different IRS

The traditional tax engagement begins after damage has been done. A lien has been filed, a levy is imminent, or an audit notice has arrived with a deadline. The practitioner enters the picture as a firefighter, working backward through months or years of IRS activity to understand the situation and assemble a defense.

This reactive posture made sense when the IRS itself was reactive and constrained by manual processes, limited data integration, and enforcement timelines that stretched across years. It does not reflect the current reality. According to the Fiscal Year 2024 IRS Data Book, new taxpayer delinquency investigations surged from roughly 60,000 in FY23 to more than 639,000 in FY24, while the ending inventory of delinquent accounts climbed to nearly 14.9 million. With machine learning models now shaping audit selection, third-party data being cross-referenced at scale, and returns scored against risk indicators, the gap between IRS action and practitioner awareness has narrowed dramatically.

The enforcement posture is shifting from agent-driven and seasonal to algorithmic and constant. And the profession is feeling the pressure — and the opportunity. In a 2025 Thomson Reuters survey, 73% of US tax and accounting professionals said their clients now strongly expect advisory services beyond basic tax preparation, more than double the figure from the prior year. If the IRS is going to operate around the clock, practitioners must build the infrastructure to do the same.

What Monitoring Actually Looks Like

IRS transcript monitoring is no longer a periodic convenience. Modern automated tools allow practitioners to track transcript activity across their entire portfolio of client relationships. Account transcripts, wage and income records, and compliance indicators are reviewed regularly when the IRS records a change, whether a pending audit flag, a lien filing, or an installment agreement modification, the practitioner is alerted before official correspondence reaches the taxpayer.

Because certain transaction codes appear on account transcripts months before formal notices are mailed, these systems can surface indicators of impending action up to six months in advance. That lead time allows for documentation review, filing corrections, and strategic conversations with the taxpayer well before a formal examination begins and penalties accrue.

The shift from a reactive practice to a proactive one is not incremental. Practitioners who use transcript monitoring to its fullest potential are no longer limited to responding to signals after they arrive. They observe IRS activity in near-real time and anticipate what’s coming.

The implications for case preparation, risk mitigation, and overall service quality are substantial, but the more consequential shift may not be operational at all. It may be due to changes in the business model.

The CAS Playbook, Applied to the Tax Industry

To understand where the tax industry is headed, it helps to look at where the broader accounting profession has already been.

Over the past decade, client advisory services have emerged as a blueprint for transforming project-based accounting work into recurring advisory relationships. The model is well documented. Built around the four pillars of strategy and governance, practice development, technology solutions, and operational excellence, CPA.com’s CAS 2.0 framework provides a structured methodology for firms making this transition. The results have been compelling. CAS practices reported a median 17% growth rate in the most recent benchmark survey, continuing a multi-year trend of double-digit expansion. Median reportable annual CAS revenue rose 61% over the prior survey period, reaching over $1.6 million for all respondents and nearly $3 million for top performers. Firms project a median 99% revenue growth over the next three years.

The CAS trajectory offers a direct parallel to tax resolution. Both began as crisis-driven, project-based practices. Both depend on deep technical expertise and client trust. And both face the same structural question of whether a firm can sustain itself on one-time engagements when the underlying technology and enforcement environment now demands continuous attention.

CAS practices answered that question by embedding ongoing financial oversight into their standard service offerings and moving to recurring pricing models. The CAS benchmark data shows this shift accelerating. Firms relying purely on hourly billing dropped from 53% in 2018 to just 10% in 2024, with 84% of respondents now using fixed-fee arrangements. Firms with formal CAS business plans reported 20% year-over-year growth, and those generating more than half their revenue from defined industry niches saw even stronger results.

Tax firms adopting transcript monitoring are following the same arc. When a firm offers year-round transcript oversight and packages it as part of an ongoing compliance monitoring program, practitioners are no longer selling one-time interventions. They’re providing sustained, proactive vigilance and structuring revenue around it.

What Changes When the Model Shifts

The financial implications of this transition are significant, though not yet as well documented in tax resolution as they are in CAS. Early adopters report improvements in retention and new revenue streams from monitoring offered as a standalone service alongside traditional tax work. The underlying logic mirrors what the CAS data has already demonstrated at scale. Recurring relationships produce steadier, more predictable income than seasonal case volume.

The client education component is particularly important. Many taxpayers still associate IRS engagement with a single audit, notice, or collections action. The concept that their IRS account is a living, continuously updated record and that changes to that record can signal future actions months before they materialize is not widely understood outside the tax community. Practitioners who communicate this effectively are creating demand for a service that didn’t exist in most practices five years ago.

The demand side is primed for this message. Three-quarters of clients surveyed by the Thomson Reuters Institute said they strongly desire advisory services beyond basic tax preparation. The expectation of proactive, year-round guidance is no longer unusual. It’s become baseline. In a world of real-time fraud alerts, credit monitoring, and push notifications, annual check-ins feel inadequate.

The Adoption Gap and Why It Matters

None of this means the transition is frictionless. The CAS experience is instructive here as well, not just for its successes, but for the barriers it has documented.

Despite strong growth, CAS benchmark data shows most revenue still comes from transactional accounting and controllership work rather than higher-value advisory services, and nearly 4 in 10 firms have not expanded into business insights at all. The technology picture is similar: fewer than half of CAS firms report using a fully integrated tech stack, and the Thomson Reuters survey cited above found that lack of time and resources remains the top barrier to greater automation, with cost of implementation close behind.

Tax firms considering the shift to monitoring will face similar headwinds. Technology selection and integration is complex. Training staff to interpret and act on monitoring alerts requires investment. Pricing a service that clients do not yet fully understand demands patience and clear communication. Perhaps most critically, the shift requires a change in professional identity, from the practitioner who solves crises to the one who prevents them.

The CAS data suggest that firms that approach this intentionally, with a formal plan, dedicated staff, defined ideal client profiles, and leadership alignment, outperform those that adopt a piecemeal approach. There is no reason to expect that tax monitoring would be different.

Looking Ahead: Compliance as a Continuous Discipline

The IRS has stated its intentions. Even amid staffing reductions, enforcement will be data-driven, algorithmically targeted, and ongoing. For tax practitioners, this represents a significant opportunity to evolve the client relationship from reactive casework into an ongoing advisory engagement.

The firms best positioned for growth will be those that treat compliance not as a point-in-time event but as a sustained discipline, one built on monitoring, proactive communication, and the infrastructure to act on early signals. This is the same conclusion the CAS movement reached years ago, and the growth data has repeatedly validated it.

The broader profession is already moving in this direction. The tools exist. The client demand exists. The enforcement environment rewards it. Tax practitioners who embrace monitoring stand to deepen client trust, generate recurring revenue, and deliver better outcomes, just as the best advisory firms have already done.