Tax season looks different when your city won’t stop growing

Key points:

• • Tax work is evolving into year-round advisory as Tampa Bay’s rapid growth increases financial complexity.
• • Talent shortages are pushing firms to rely more on technology and AI to maintain efficiency.
• • External pressures like tariffs and interest rates are driving more proactive, strategic tax planning.

April 2026 — Every spring, accountants across Tampa Bay do what accountants everywhere do: collect documents, crunch numbers, and help clients meet their filing deadlines. But tax season is changing. More often, it’s less of a sprint to the finish line and more of an extended check-in on how a business is actually doing — and where it wants to go.

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That shift is happening against the backdrop of one of the fastest-growing economies in the country. Tampa Bay’s population surpassed 5.2 million in 2023, growing at over 2% annually, placing it among the fastest-growing metro areas in the United States. Florida’s economy has reached approximately $1.7 trillion, and the region’s economic output expanded by more than 40% between 2019 and 2023. 

New corporate relocations have become almost routine. The pressure that kind of growth puts on businesses — on their operations, their hiring, their financial complexity — doesn’t pause for April 15.

Part of what draws businesses here is Florida’s tax environment. The state has no personal income tax, a relatively business-friendly corporate tax structure, and no estate tax — a combination that makes it genuinely appealing for entrepreneurs, executives, and companies looking to relocate or expand. For many of the businesses arriving in Tampa Bay, the tax picture is part of the pitch. But favorable doesn’t mean simple, and as operations grow, so does the complexity of getting it right.

“Strong regional economies need strong local accountants, lawyers, bankers, and advisors. You need all of those ingredients for the business community to thrive,” Jeffery Olender, Central Florida market leader at national CPA firm Cherry Bekaert told Invest: Tampa Bay.

Beyond the return

From Olender’s perspective, numbers are a lens, not just a record of what happened, but a tool for figuring out what to do next.

“Numbers touch everything,” Olender said. “They are the output we use to understand the past, and the input that helps businesses set goals and plan for the future.”

That philosophy plays out in practice in ways that wouldn’t have sounded much like “tax work” a decade ago. Wade Sansbury, partner in charge at Mauldin & Jenkins, LLC in Bradenton and Sarasota, described a pattern that has become familiar. A client comes in for an audit, and in the process of doing that audit, the team surfaces something the client hadn’t been tracking — a risk exposure, an opportunity they’d been overlooking, a structural issue quietly costing them money.

“Often, a client brings us in for one specific need, like an audit, and through that process we identify additional risks or opportunities they may not have been aware of,” Sansbury said. 

That kind of advisory relationship has become more valuable as Tampa Bay’s business environment has grown more complex. More than 270,000 people have moved into the region since 2020. With them has come a surge in new businesses, expanded operations, and all the financial entanglements those things bring.

Talent crunch

Growth creates opportunity, but it also creates pressure. And right now, one of the biggest pressure points in the accounting profession is finding enough people to do the work.

Sansbury is direct about it: fewer people are choosing accounting as a career, and even fewer are sitting for the CPA exam. That’s not a Tampa Bay problem specifically; it’s a profession-wide shift. But in a fast-growing market where client needs are expanding and deadlines keep compressing, the staffing math gets uncomfortable quickly.

The response, at least among the firms navigating it best, has been to lean into technology to free up the capacity of the people you have.

“A lot of companies are trying to determine how to operate more efficiently… When talent is limited, it creates a necessity to innovate,” Olender said.

AI in the room

Artificial intelligence has entered accounting the same way it’s entered most professional services — gradually, then all at once. Firms are using data analysis tools at a scale that would have seemed unusual just a few years ago. The applications are widening: risk scoring, workflow management, flagging areas of a filing that warrant a closer look.

But the people doing this work are quick to note where the limits are. Olender emphasizes that AI tools still require professional oversight and judgment — the speed improves, but the human in the loop doesn’t go away. Sansbury frames it simply: AI should enhance what professionals do, not replace them.

The value a good accountant brings is about knowing what the data means for a specific client in a specific situation.

Forces from the outside

This year’s tax season hasn’t unfolded in a vacuum. Bob Batz, senior managing director at CBIZ in Tampa, points to two external pressures that have been shaping how businesses approach financial planning: tariffs and interest rates.

Supply chain complexity has made cost structures harder to predict, and the ripple effects show up in tax strategy whether clients want them to or not. Meanwhile, elevated interest rates have dampened deal activity and put a chill on certain types of investment, which means fewer transactions to plan around, and more caution in how businesses deploy capital.

“Tariffs and supply chain challenges have been a primary focus… providing strategies to mitigate the associated financial impacts,” Batz said. Together, those forces are pushing clients toward more proactive planning — not just asking “what do we owe?” but “how do we structure things so we’re not caught off guard next year?”

With the region projected to reach nearly 5.9 million residents by 2030, the pace of corporate announcements from new headquarters to expanded operations shows no signs of tapering.

For the firms that serve those businesses, the work is becoming less seasonal and more continuous. The annual return becomes one deliverable among many, not the whole relationship. 

“Growth doesn’t just happen. It has to be intentional… while staying adaptable as the pace of change continues,” Sansbury said.

Want more? Read the Invest: Tampa Bay report.