Some accountants are turning away new customers this tax season

Tax filing season is here and if you’ve been putting off finding a CPA, good luck. Between a wave of retirees and a drop in the number of people graduating with accounting degrees, the whole profession is struggling to staff up.

Jenni Merrell, a CPA in Chico, California, is already swamped this tax season. “I’m working like 11-, 12-hour days 6 days a week.”

For the last couple of years, Merrell said that her small firm has been short-staffed and booked solid.

“We get calls all the time saying, ‘Hey, my CPA just retired. Do you have room?’ And we don’t,” she said.

That’s been happening across the industry, according to Adrienne Gonzalez, who edits the accounting blog Going Concern.

“Turning away work has been a very new development,” she said.

With young people opting for higher-paying fields out of college, Gonzalez said that lots of accounting firms just can’t take on a lot of new business. Some are finding solutions overseas.

“At some firms, you’re talking 50%, 60% of the work is being offshored to the Philippines, India,” she said.

And down the road, Gonzalez thinks robots could take on some accounting work — the largest firms are already giving artificial intelligence a cautious try.