You thought you had a hectic 2025? Call up your buddies at the IRS, where busy season officially lasted all year, thanks in part to a rotating cast of commissioners, mass layoffs, and a government shutdown. IRS? More like “IRStress,” amirite?

As the new year approaches, we’re looking back at everything that happened over at the IRS in 2025, and delusionally pretending it can all fit in one article.

The year certainly started with a bang. In January, former IRS commissioner Danny Werfel said he would step down that month, a surprise exit ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration. Werfel was supposed to stay until 2027, as commissioners typically serve five-year terms, but President Trump nominated former Rep. Billy Long (R-MO) to take over as commissioner, putting Werfel in an awkward and abnormal spot.

Then in February, the IRS cut over 6,000 jobs as part of a wider federal government trimming led by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

The cuts, which occurred as busy season kicked off, mainly concerned probationary workers, primarily recent hires who “were not deemed critical to filing season,” according to internal emails about termination plans. Given the lack of resources at the IRS, government watchdogs and former IRS officials argued that layoffs, rather than streamlining the agency, would hinder efficiency.

Keep reading.—NP

It’s been a fraught year for the PCAOB. In May, Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee advanced a measure that would have eliminated the board and folded its functions into the SEC (the provision was ultimately struck down by the Senate parliamentarian). Then, in July, chair Erica Williams resigned at the request of SEC Chair Paul Atkins.

But during a December 9 AICPA Conference session on the latest SEC and PCAOB developments, acting chair George Botic gave what sounded an awful lot like a defense of the board, emphasizing the work it’s done on behalf of capital markets. “A world without the PCAOB,” he said, would lack “three pillars of investor protection”: inspections, “new and revised auditing standards,” and transparency mechanisms such as Form AP and Critical Audit Matters.

“I believe each of these pillars has been a watershed moment for investors in the capital markets. If we consider what life would be like with their absence, I strongly believe investors would be worse off,” Botic, a CPA who’s been with the PCAOB since 2003, said.

Keep reading for the lowdown on early inspection reports.—CV

Three years since ChatGPT supercharged the AI field, predicting the future of the fast-changing technology is not for the faint of heart. But one sure bet is that, in the last weeks of the year, our inboxes will bulge with experts who want to give it a go anyway.

Many of last year’s predictions concerned the onset of AI agents. Now they’re more or less here, and businesses will be increasingly focused on getting them to work together, trusting them, and dealing with the risks they might present, our experts seem to agree.

There remains an undercurrent of worry about ROI still being somewhat TBD, and fears of an AI bubble have heightened in recent months. World models, another not-entirely-new term that’s somewhat definitionally vague, are suddenly seeing more interest as a potential way to give LLMs better bearings.

Here are some of the major themes that tech pros told us might define AI development in 2026.

Keep reading on Tech Brew.—PK

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