Anyone who thinks accounting’s boring wasn’t an accountant in 2025

There was no shortage of excitement in the world of accounting this year. (If your father-in-law laughs at this assertion, just threaten to start charging him for helping file his tax returns.)

AI continued to transform not just the accounting profession itself, but business as a whole. Private equity grew its influence in public accounting. Lawmakers passed consequential tax legislation. And a downsized IRS really went through it during President Donald Trump’s first year back in office.

Accounting firms and corporate finance teams are operating in an Everything Everywhere All at Once environment, according to Tom Hood, EVP of business engagement and growth at the AICPA.

In case you forgot, or even missed (no judgment!) some of the biggest happenings this year in the accounting world, CFO Brew is here to jog your memory (like it or not).

Machine takeover? AI was seemingly on everyone’s minds. AI investment was so big that it boosted US GDP growth by 1.3 percentage points in Q1, followed by a percentage point in Q2, according to a recent EY-Parthenon report.

Companies didn’t leave their accounting teams out of their AI innovation strategies. In fact, AI was the dominating topic at industry conferences CFO Brew attended throughout the year. At the Gartner CFO & Finance Executive Conference in May, experts explained that AI was a better automation tool than robotic process automation (RPA) and could mine data much better than we humanfolk. And at Workiva’s Amplify conference, practitioners shared numerous AI use cases, from writing data queries and identifying key trends in SEC filings to tweaking financial commentary for the intended audience.

According to recent research from MIT Sloan and Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, accountants who used generative AI handled 55% more clients per week and took 7.5 days off the month-end close, CFO Brew previously reported.

“This past year, AI moved from experimentation to the early stages of integration in both public accounting and corporate finance,” AICPA’s Hood told us in an email. He added that “CFOs now rank the need for new skills and GenAI, and digital transformation as their top three priorities, ahead of talent and culture.”

Building the pipeline. There are warning signs that AI is already taking over some portion of white-collar jobs, including in the finance function. At the same time, finance leaders continue to grapple with a shortage of accountants. A recent AICPA report showed that the demand for new accounting graduates still exceeded the supply, though future years may see more of a balance—accounting schools saw an increase in enrollment in the 2024–2025 academic year.

“Strengthening the pipeline to the CPA is not accomplished via a single tackle but rather requires a variable yet consistent strategy over time,” Mike Decker, VP of CPA examination and pipeline at AICPA, told us in an email. Decker added that “numerous stakeholders,” including individual firms, educational institutions, and the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy, “have joined the AICPA with increased commitment to support aspiring CPAs and the metrics are starting to measure their impact.”

One way to boost accounting, according to experts, is to lower the barriers to entry in the profession. That’s why the industry, and lawmakers, took aim at the 150-hour rule this year. AICPA and NASBA hopped on the growing bandwagon of the rule’s opponents and approved alternatives to the educational requirement in May.

Dispatches from Washington. There was plenty of change coming out of our nation’s capital this year, and we won’t even touch on upheaval at agencies like the BLS and NOAA.

The Internal Revenue Service got the DOGE chainsaw treatment earlier this year, with another round of layoffs in November that terminated 1,400 workers, according to recent court filings, adding to the roughly 25% of employees who left before that. The cuts had industry groups sounding the alarm earlier this year. But despite the layoffs, the 2025 tax season went pretty smoothly. Next year is another question.

The IRS also had a shakeup (or two) with its leadership. After numerous failed attempts at replacing the agency’s commissioner, the Treasury Department decided instead to create a new IRS leadership position: Meet the new CEO, Frank Bisignano, who’s pulling double duty as the head of the Social Security Administration. Bisignano’s appointment came after former IRS commissioner Billy Long lasted just 53 days on the job.

“As we begin preparations for the 2026 filing season, the AICPA will continue to work with the IRS to provide recommendations to simplify and improve tax administration for taxpayers and practitioners,” Melanie Lauridsen, VP of tax policy and advocacy at AICPA, told CFO Brew in an email.