I was recently asked if I thought the upcoming tax season will represent a return to normal for tax advisors and their clients. To be honest, I thought, “What’s normal anymore?” If normal can be defined as adapting to perpetual change, then the answer is an emphatic “YES!” Or, as New York Yankees legend Yogi Berra once said, “It’s like déjà vu all over again.”
In fact, I contend the 2018 tax season was perhaps the last “normal” busy season encountered by tax professionals (2017 tax returns were filed based on pre-Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 tax law). Since then, each subsequent tax season has been demanding, challenging and for some tax professionals, career-altering…a bit more on that later. All tax professionals have been impacted. Perhaps the only tax season attribute that can be considered “normal” for tax advisors nowadays is to expect the unexpected.