When does tax season 2009 begin? Earlier than you might think.

Tax practitioners already looking ahead to the next busy season didn’t necessarily like how things went last season. So they are preparing new strategies and planning to implement them earlier, in order to minimize stress in this increasingly hectic aspect of their careers.

Headed into next tax season, practitioners’ top concerns, according to our CPA Trendlines research, are the following:

1. Late or unprepared clients
2. Staffing
3. Erroneous forms
4. Technology or software problems
5. The economy

But a new issue is looming: new and changing tax codes and regulations. This year’s economic stimulus and housing bailout legislation contains a number of new issues for tax practitioners. And the next president and Congress could have additional ideas — quite possibly at the last minute.

Meanwhile, workload stress remains a big factor. Only five percent of surveyed CPAs boasted of encountering little or no stress during the last busy season. Conversely, stress was identified as “consistent” by one-quarter (24%) of those surveyed, which includes seven percent of respondents who said their offices were “totally crazed.”

Stress has gotten bad enough to prompt some practitioners to secretly wish that tax season — as dreaded as it is — would be lengthened to relieve the pressure.

“Lots of work and only 24 measly hours in each day. I wish it would last for 10 months rather than just four,” says Mark Kiger, owner of a small tax practice in Clarksburg, W. Va., which endured a staffing shortage last season.

Although technology problems rank as a top concern, only eight percent of tax practitioners said they would consider changing tax software packages. Of the few software problems identified, the most prominent were:

• high costs,
• difficulty in use,
• difficulty in obtaining training and
• tech support issues.

Among the few tax practitioners looking to change software vendors, a managing partner noted that after his vendor’s support desk was unable to resolve an issue related to getting numbers calculated in the software to populate a state form, his office “had to use Wite-Out and manually prepare the form.”

Meanwhile, William R. Bloom in New York has been talking with employees about how to handle the upcoming tax season’s staffing and training. He acknowledges that if he had hired staff earlier last year, he could have avoided a rough 2008 tax season in which the firm fell behind on personal tax return business when work in business tax returns surged.

He is contemplating increasing training and compensation, noting, “We need more productivity from staff. Sometimes we just get hours.”

Another managing partner, coming off what he considers a rougher 2008 season because of staffing concerns, has been meeting with staffers to discuss his and their expectations for the upcoming season. He says he will “try to overstaff so that [he doesn’t] carry the brunt of the shortfall.”

A third small-firm owner is hoping to hire two additional CPAs before next season begins and to bring in summer interns to train them on what he calls “light tax prep.” When he needed additional help last year, an ad placed with his state’s CPA society generated only two responses — both from people who had let their CPA licenses lapse.

Staffing and late or unprepared clients top the list of concerns identified in the study. “New clients are always the worst, especially if they have a business and haven't had any direction until they see me,” laments one managing partner.

Of course, the only thing more problematic than a new client is no new clients at all. It doesn’t appear that CPAs will need to worry about that this season.

NOW IT’S YOUR TURN: Are you ready for busy season 2009? What are you doing differently this year? What’s your best tip for colleagues? E-mail me and we’ll report the best ideas and most interesting comments.

WATCH: Tune in to Video Snacks on related topics.

Copyright © 2008 CPA Trendlines/BSG LLC. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. First published by the AICPA.