The accounting profession walked into 2026 riding a dealmaking wave that shows no sign of settling down. In late July, Grant Thornton announced an agreement to buy CBIZ for $5 billion, building one of the largest accounting and professional services firms outside the Big Four. Reuters counted 120 accounting, audit and tax services deals across the United States through July 16, the busiest start to a year since 2016. Numbers like those tend to grab attention, and they signal that buyers are moving with intent while sellers who’ve prepared their practices stand to benefit.
A five-billion-dollar acquisition can feel a world away from the daily reality of an independent CPA, EA or tax practice owner in California, Oregon or Washington. Most local firms aren’t fielding calls from global investors, and their owners are focused on retirement, a lighter workload, a successor or a sale that sits several years down the road. Those goals feel personal and small next to a headline deal, yet the pressures behind the headlines reach practices of every size.
Those same forces land on firms of every size once you look past the scale. Technology spending has grown harder to put off, experienced staff stay tough to recruit, and clients now expect quick communication alongside broader advisory help.
Accounting practices keep producing the recurring revenue and durable client relationships that make buyers pay attention, which is why interest stays high even as the demands on owners grow, leaving plenty of room for buyers and almost none for a transition that hasn’t been thought through.
Private Equity Deals Are Only Part of the Picture
Private equity draws most of the headlines because the deals run large and the names are recognizable. Accounting Today reported in 2025 that private equity firms had picked up five of the country’s 26 largest accounting firms inside a three-year stretch, and the same report tallied more than $6.3 billion in private equity and venture-backed deal value across accounting, auditing and tax services during 2024.
None of that means a small firm should sit by the phone waiting for a private equity offer. What it does show is that the market puts considerable weight on established accounting businesses, recurring client work and the chance to lift performance through technology and scale.
Smaller accounting practice sales still run mostly on individual buyers, current firm owners and professionals stepping into ownership for the first time. First-time buyers closed 46 percent of acquisitions in the broader Main Street business market during 2025, according to the International Business Brokers Association and M&A Source, with serial entrepreneurs handling another 32 percent.
For an independent practice owner, the likely buyer is often another CPA looking to expand into a nearby city, an EA ready to run a firm or a regional practice wanting to add a book of clients. That buyer carries none of the name recognition of a national consolidator while still bringing the right mix of financing, experience and respect for the relationships the firm has built.
Healthy Firms Have More Options
Accounting firms came into this consolidation stretch standing on fairly solid ground. The AICPA’s 2025 National Management of an Accounting Practice Survey found a median 6.7 percent jump in net client fees over the prior year, and net remaining per partner or owner climbed 11.9 percent between fiscal years 2022 and 2024. More than 80 percent of the responses came from firms bringing in $5 million or less, which makes the findings especially useful for independent and regional practices sizing up their own value.
Strong industry numbers pull buyers in without promising that every practice earns the same look. Picture two firms with matching gross revenue that still tell buyers completely different stories. A diversified client base, current pricing, documented processes and staff who can carry relationships without the owner hovering all point to a practice a buyer can step into with confidence. When most of the revenue leans on a handful of large clients, complex work gets underpriced and the operating knowledge lives entirely in the owner’s head, that same revenue figure suddenly looks a lot riskier. Revenue opens the valuation conversation, and the quality, transferability and profitability behind it decide where things go from there.
The West Coast Isn’t One Accounting Market
West Coast works fine as a regional label even though it stretches across wildly different practice environments. A tax practice in Los Angeles can pull from a large buyer pool while carrying steep staffing and occupancy costs, and a Portland firm might serve a blend of local businesses and remote clients scattered across the map. Move into a smaller Washington or Oregon community and the competition thins out, though the pool of buyers willing to relocate or keep a physical office thins right along with it.
Even two firms a few miles apart can look nothing alike once you dig in. Client industries, local hiring conditions, office leases, state tax work, revenue concentration and the seller’s day-to-day involvement all shape the kind of buyer who can run the place well.
Owners weighing West Coast accounting firm brokers do themselves a favor by looking past the count of practices sitting on a listing page. A broker worth hiring knows the local buyer pool, spots candidates with the financial and professional muscle to run the practice, guards confidentiality and helps both sides push through the fine points that decide whether a deal closes. A long roster of inquiries counts for little when most of the people behind it can’t line up financing, handle the workload or hold on to the clients.
Buyers Are Digging Into the Firm Behind the Financials
Historical revenue still carries weight even as due diligence casts a wider net. Buyers want a clear read on how much work the owner personally does, which employees hold the key client relationships and how smoothly the practice’s knowledge can move to someone new. Their review can run through client tenure, fee history, collection patterns, service categories, staff compensation, software agreements, leases, cybersecurity habits and the age of the firm’s technology.
They also need to know what they’re buying, since a practice with a recognizable brand, trained employees, established workflows and recurring advisory relationships is a different animal from a stack of tax-return clients who surface once a year.
Dependence on the selling owner earns its own hard look during this process. Clients can look loyal to the firm when their loyalty rests mostly with one person, and that reality doesn’t make a practice unsellable so much as it raises the stakes on introductions, seller involvement and a carefully paced handoff of responsibility.
Due diligence should surface those risks well before anyone signs the purchase agreement, and it works best when both sides treat it as a way to price the business fairly rather than a hunt for reasons to walk away. Its whole job is making sure the price, terms and transition plan match the business changing hands.
Technology Now Factors Into Practice Value
Technology has climbed the list of things buyers weigh before making an offer. In June 2026, the AICPA reported that managing change tied to technology and artificial intelligence ranked as the top five-year concern among CPA firms of every size. Hiring experienced staff led the current worries for firms with 11 to 30 professionals, while finding the next generation of leadership topped the list for firms with 31 to 100 professionals.
Those pressures feed each other more than they look. Firms lean on technology to add capacity, widen their services and cut repetitive work, in part because hiring on its own rarely clears a workload backlog.
A buyer will often pay more for a practice running cloud-based systems, organized digital records, dependable security controls and employees who know the firm’s software cold. An outdated system rarely kills a sale on its own, though any buyer weighs the time, cost and disruption that come with ripping it out and starting over.
Owners don’t need to chase every new platform before they sell. What matters is being able to explain how work moves through the practice, where client information lives, who can reach it and which systems the office can’t run a day without, because a buyer can’t protect what nobody ever wrote down.
Financing Can Shape the Offer as Much as Price
An eye-catching purchase price means little when the deal can’t get financed in the first place. The IBBA and M&A Source reported that sellers in the broader business market took home an average of 76 to 89 percent of deal value in cash at closing during the fourth quarter of 2025, counting both buyer equity and senior debt. Seller financing stuck around as a way to close valuation gaps, while earnouts and retained equity showed up less often.
Accounting practices tend to look attractive to lenders because an established firm can start throwing off income the moment the deal closes. A lender still digs into cash flow, client retention risk, buyer qualifications, purchase terms and how much working capital sits in reserve once the acquisition wraps.
A buyer who shows proof of financing early can be the stronger option, even against someone proposing a bigger number on uncertain funding. Sellers do well to weigh the odds of closing right next to the headline price. A broker who lives in accounting practice transactions can flag financing trouble before it sinks a deal that would otherwise work, screening the buyer’s resources, coordinating with lenders and pulling together the business information a loan package needs.
The Most Valuable Work May Begin After Closing
Accounting practices run on recurring relationships, which is a big part of why buyers want them and an even bigger part of why the transition earns so much attention. Clients want to know who’s taking over, why the owner picked that person and what happens to the service they count on, while staff need enough information to stay confident and field the questions that follow. The buyer needs runway to absorb the history behind major accounts, the recurring deadlines and the service expectations that may have never made it onto paper.
The seller’s role deserves a clear definition before closing rather than after. A small handoff might run a few weeks of introductions and the occasional phone call, and a larger one can stretch into several months of structured involvement, with the right arrangement tracking the size of the practice, the seller’s role, the strength of the staff and how well the buyer already knows the client base.
Disappear the moment the funds clear and client retention takes a hit, yet stay on with no end date and the buyer struggles to establish their own authority. A good transition threads that needle, giving clients confidence while making it plain that ownership has moved to someone new.
ProHorizons puts the start of the transition as the final step in its 12-step buying process and calls it the most important one in the sequence. Their approach covers planning the client and staff conversations, supplying sample communications and coordinating the handoff once the deal closes. That emphasis lands in the right spot, because a signed agreement settles who owns the firm while client retention settles how much of the purchased value survives the change.
Preparation Still Beats Perfect Timing
Owners often hold off on prepping a practice for sale until the picture clears, hoping to learn what interest rates will do, how tax law might shift or how long the current acquisition cycle has left in it. The market almost never hands anyone that kind of clarity, so preparation ends up being the thing that gives an owner more control across a wide range of conditions. That work can mean cleaning up financial statements, documenting workflows, revisiting pricing, sorting out unprofitable client relationships, easing the practice’s dependence on the owner and developing employees who can keep things running without a hitch.
It can also mean sitting down for a confidential talk with a broker several years ahead of the planned sale. ProHorizons reports that plenty of owners reach out well before they’re ready to hit the market, which buys time to make changes that strengthen the practice’s position. The firm has concentrated on accounting practice sales and acquisitions since 1995 and screens prospective buyers for technical fit and financial capacity before it ever introduces them to sellers.
Speed and readiness aren’t the same thing, however fast the accounting transaction market moves in 2026. Firms that show up with clear financials, transferable relationships and a believable transition plan are the ones positioned to turn buyer interest into a strong outcome. The ones that wait until retirement sits only a few months out often end up negotiating against the calendar, and the calendar rarely blinks first.
