Accounting
The 2025 Accounting Today Salary Survey: Sweetening the deal
Accounting firm salaries have jumped in 2025, with particularly significant gains for entry-level staff — but it’s still not clear skies ahead for the profession when it comes to recruiting and retention, with competitive pay being only one part of the equation.
Experts highlighted the numerous variables affecting the compensation conversation, including the softening economy, the disparity between external hires’ salaries and those of internal hires, private equity, and the need for well-informed decision-making.
Accounting promises stable careers with great partner salaries, as long as employees put in the time to earn those big paychecks. But the apprenticeship business model is no longer cutting it for young workers who are in high demand — particularly when starting salaries in business, finance and technology careers outpace those in accounting.
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In the middle of a professionwide labor shortage — in which fewer people are studying accounting, fewer are earning the CPA license, and even fewer are remaining in the profession until they make partner — increasing starting compensation is an important lever for firms to pull to attract talent.
Accounting Today conducted our second annual salary survey in May 2025, collecting 768 responses from accountants from firms of all sizes regarding their salaries, benefits, and career trajectories. The survey found that entry-level compensation increased year over year, with salaries at every other level not far behind. The median base salary for staff accountants was $75,000 in 2025, $93,000 for seniors, and $127,000 for managers, up 15%, 6% and 6% from 2024, respectively. Simultaneously, partners at firms of all sizes saw a 9% year-over-year increase to a median base salary of $200,000.
But Dominic Piscopo, founder of Big 4 Transparency, an anonymous, crowdsourced database of accounting compensation, noted the strategic flaw in raising salaries across the board. By implementing blanket increases, “You’ve actually moved it more than the market at the senior manager level, and way less than the market at all the other levels,” he said.
Jennifer Wilson, partner and co-founder at ConvergenceCoaching, confirmed, saying that many firms think that if starting salaries go up, then everyone’s salary has to go up, too. “That’s baloney,” she said, “because there’s these huge jumps between senior and supervisor, between supervisor and manager, manager and senior manager.”
The solution is to make the largest adjustment in the lowest salary band (staff), and make smaller adjustments in the subsequent bands (senior, manager, etc.) to flatten the steep climb to partner salaries. “You can’t have less than CPI, you can’t,” she said. “Then people are losing money to work for you, and that’s not OK.”
Piscopo also worries that when it comes to the compensation conversation, many firms are stuck in an echo chamber and, thus, are making siloed decisions. “I think a lot of firms are not taking in as much market feedback as they should be when it comes to setting internal salaries,” he said. “They’re not doing the work or investing the resources to properly evaluate what is actually happening with market salaries, and so that is a decision that’s making them drift away from what is actually happening in the market.”
Not enough change
Sandra Wiley, shareholder and president at Boomer Consulting, still doesn’t see enough change happening with enough urgency.
“I still think there’s a talent shortage, I still think that there are a lot less people, but I don’t think that’s driving the salaries up like I thought it would,” Wiley said.
Firms are undoubtedly talking more about raising starting salaries, she said, but there’s been hesitancy to actually do so. Why? She thinks it is because raising salaries has to come out of the partners’ pockets.
“Where’s the money going to come from? You only have so much money in a budget. So if we take 50 employees, or 100 employees, and we have to raise all of them by $10,000, that’s a lot of money,” she said. “It’s going to come from profit. That profit is what’s feeding the partners their compensation.”
Accounting Today’s survey data shows that the median base partner salary is $155,000 for those at firms with fewer than 10 employees, and $210,000 for firms with more than 10 employees. These numbers likely skew low, as more than half (52%) of respondents reported working at firms with less than $5 million in net revenue. For this reason, partner data for midsized and large firms could not be broken out in detail with a high enough level of statistical significance. However, the data shows that the top 5% of partners at firms with fewer than 10 employees earned $350,000, and the top 5% at firms with more than 10 employees earned $932,000. Of course, partners at the Big Four and other billion-dollar firms can make far more, but relatively few participated in the survey and were thus treated as outliers.
Softening economy
Wilson sees a new problem on the horizon at large firms that is a result of the macroeconomic outlook under the Trump administration. The will-they, won’t-they quality of the imposed tariffs, as well as other policies, have created a “spongy, softened economy.” In fact, over one-third (35%) of financial executives say mitigating economic uncertainty and global market volatility is their top challenge for planning in 2025, according to a survey by the Financial Education and Research Foundation.
“This uncertainty — not only does it create a conservative way of looking at expenses by CPA firms, but it also creates this, ‘Hey, our people aren’t really moving like they were two years ago. We added a bunch of interns and we’re hiring a class of first-years like we always have, but we’re not seeing the turnover that we’ve seen in the past. So now we might be at capacity,’ which is a foreign idea,” Wilson said.
“We’re cautioning folks because we’re trying to remind them of the big picture,” she continued. “Because this is a small picture called ‘the second half of 2025 is funny and uncertain.'”
The big picture she refers to is the shrinking working age population and an aging cohort of partners nearing retirement. According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, the prime working age population, 25 to 64 years old, has significantly shrunk since the mid-1990s, and the gap is being filled by older workers.
“Because of the economy and because we might be misreading the short, small-picture signals, I’m concerned that firms are going to make sure that, at a minimum, they’re retaining their best and brightest with the right sort of compensation increases, bonuses,” Wilson said.
Meanwhile, Catherine Moy, chief people officer at Top 10 Firm BDO USA, emphasized that employment capacity is a “multivariable equation.”
“We have an alignment of the stars right now. They’re keeping good people where they are,” said Moy. In 2023, BDO transitioned to an employee stock ownership plan, or ESOP. “It is a financial and values play all in one,” she said. “But that’s not instead of anything we had before — it’s not instead of market-based comp, it’s not instead of discretionary bonuses, it’s not instead of any benefit — it’s in addition to.”
“The market tends to evolve, but not in dramatic swings,” she continued. “If it becomes more of an employer market, that’s a little easier for many employers to retain people. We don’t cut our salaries back because we don’t have to pay that much. We never do that. … If the market moves, we move with the market so that it tends to not be in dramatic increments.”
Moy added that firms like BDO are quite resilient to macroeconomic and administration changes such as this.
“I think it’s a stressful time because humans don’t like uncertainty. We like to know what is and what isn’t,” she said. “But in real-world terms, when it comes down to affecting compensation today for the average employee of a large public accounting firm, we set ourselves up for resilience. That’s why we’re in many geographies and many disciplines and very diversified. So we are a portfolio of professional opportunities that doesn’t have us vulnerable to any particular moment in time or policy change.”
Loyalty tax
Piscopo also highlighted another issue: a trend he calls the “loyalty tax.” He defined the loyalty tax as “the premium that’s paid to an externally hired employee who is doing the same job as another internally promoted employee.” The problem forms when firms look to hire someone external and that prospective employee negotiates up. “They end up stuck paying this person disproportionately more than what they’re paying their internal people,” Piscopo said.
This weakens retention by sending the signal to internal employees that they need to leave their firm if they want to be paid competitively. According to Accounting Today’s survey, one-third of respondents — overwhelmingly managers, seniors and staff — reported feeling that they would need to job hop in order to make a meaningful salary increase, while 54% disagreed.
Nearly seven in 10 respondents (68%) said that they received a raise at their firm within the last year. Meanwhile, 7% said they received a raise within the last 13 to 18 months, 8% within the last 19 to 24 months, 2% within 25 to 36 months, and 3% say their last raise was more than three years ago.
There are pros and cons to moving firms, Piscopo noted. Of course, the most obvious is the opportunity for a bigger paycheck. However, the cons include losing connections and relationships, and being labeled as a “job hopper,” which can be a turnoff for potential employers.
Additionally, firm hopping “becomes increasingly problematic because of the increasing role technology, process and operations play in the success of an accounting practice these days,” he said. “Long gone are the days when accountants were filling out paper returns. Each firm may use different tax software, different practice management software, and a unique process of how returns are handled, like when one firm outsources while the other does not.”
“I think the ramp time for a fully productive employee is probably more than it was because of all of this technology, which, again, makes us way better at what we do,” he continued. “But you’re expected to do way more, and so you need to learn how to harness a new tech stack every time, which is not super easy.”
He added, “I think it paints a picture of a very reactive industry [that’s] not staying ahead of the curve and taking care of their people, but rather who find themselves on the wrong end of that and then have to scramble to get resources right to get people in the door.”
Boomer Consulting’s Wiley says private equity’s entrance into the accounting space is another factor that might impact salaries down the road. While partners reap massive payouts from PE firms — double, triple or even quadruple what they could take home on their own — Wiley has yet to see how that money trickles down to the rest of the firm members.
“If our younger people that are in the firms, if they’re seeing partners get big payouts and big money, but yet, when they look at their paycheck, it’s exactly the same as it was, or just a 3% or 4% raise from a year ago, I think they’re going to start getting pretty disillusioned pretty fast,” she said. “But we just don’t know yet. We’re still in the waiting game.”
Wilson added, “I think that the real opportunity is for independent firms who are not going to go that route to cherry-pick talent.”
Bonuses
Wilson advocates for performance-based incentives. In other words: bonuses.
“You can keep from accelerating fixed costs by not getting so much of an increase on the base, but providing financial incentives, performance-based incentives, bonus money,” she said.
Accounting Today’s survey found that 71% of respondents say that they were eligible for bonuses as part of their compensation at their firm, while 24% said they were not eligible (5% weren’t sure). Eight in 10 accountants (82%) say that they are aware of what makes them eligible for these bonuses.
The most common types of bonuses were individualized performance bonuses (56%), followed by profit sharing (39%) and regular tax season bonuses (28%). However, when looking at actual bonuses received compared to potential bonuses, most accountants across all levels received a lower bonus than their potential.
However, those financial incentives must be results-based. “What’s cool about results-based compensation is that it calls people to the mission,” Wilson explained. “It calls people to the purpose, and people love to work in a place where they believe in the purpose of the mission, and they can see the results of that. They’re producing results that they can see. And so if that’s where the disconnect is, that’s why people don’t like hours or effort, because they’re like, ‘How does this apply to what we’re doing?'”
“I’m not trying to be negative, but I don’t want us to think we’re there now,” she said. “If it was an increase off of something crummy, comparatively — we’re not there yet. And I do hear people trying to say, ‘Good news, salaries are jumping up.’ Yes, they are, but so are everyone else’s.”
The Financial Accounting Standards Board met this week to discuss its projects on accounting for transfers of cryptocurrency assets and enhancing the disclosures around certain digital assets, such as stablecoins.
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During Wednesday’s meeting, FASB’s board made certain tentative decisions, according to a
At a future meeting, the board plans to consider clarifying the derecognition guidance for crypto transfer arrangements to assess whether the control of a crypto asset has been transferred.
FASB also began deliberations on the
The board decided to provide illustrative examples in Topic 230, Statement of Cash Flows, to clarify whether certain digital assets such as stablecoins can meet the definition of cash equivalents. It also decided to include the following concepts in the illustrative examples:
- Interpretive explanations that link to the current cash equivalents definition;
- The amount and composition of reserve assets; and,
- The nature of qualifying on-demand, contractual cash redemption rights directly with the issuer.
FASB plans to clarify that an entity should consider compliance with relevant laws and regulations when it’s creating a policy concerning which assets that satisfy the Master Glossary definition of the term “cash equivalents“ will be treated as cash equivalents.
“I agree with the staff suggestion to look at examples,” said FASB vice chair Hillary Salo. “From my perspective, I think that is going to help level the playing field. People have been making reasonable judgments. I agree with that. And I think that this is really going to help show those goalposts or guardrails of what types of stablecoins would be in the scope of cash equivalents, and which ones would not be in the scope of cash equivalents. I certainly appreciate that approach, and I think it has the least potential impact of unintended consequences, because I do agree with my fellow board members that we shouldn’t be changing the definition of cash equivalents, and it’s a high bar to get into the cash equivalent definition.”
“I’m definitely supportive of not changing the definition of cash equivalents,” said FASB chair Richard Jones. “I believe that’s settled GAAP in a way, and we’re not really seeing a call to change it for broader issues. I am supportive of the example-based approach. The challenge with examples, though, is everybody’s going to want their exact pattern, but that’s not what we’re doing.”
The examples will explain the rationale for how digital assets such as stablecoins do or do not qualify as cash equivalents and give a roadmap for other types of digital assets with varying fact patterns to be able to apply.
“We really don’t want to be as a board facing a situation where something was a cash equivalent and then no longer is at a later date,” said Jones. “That’s not good for anyone, so keeping it as a high bar with certain rigid criteria, I think, is fine.”
Stablecoins are supposed to be pegged to fiat currencies such as U.S. dollars and thus provide more stability to investors. “In my view, while a stablecoin may meet the accounting definition established for cash equivalents, not every one of those stablecoins in the cash equivalent classification represents the same level of risk,” said FASB member Joyce Joseph.
She noted that the capital markets recognize the distinctions and have established a Stablecoin Stability Assessment Framework to evaluate a stablecoin’s ability to maintain its peg to a fiat currency. Such assessments look at the legal and regulatory framework associated with the stablecoin, and provide investors with information that could enable them to do forward-looking assessments about the stability of the stablecoin.
“However, for an investor to consider and utilize such information for a company analysis the financial statement disclosures would need to include information about the stablecoin itself,” Joseph added. “In outreach, the staff learned that investors supported classifying certain stablecoins as cash equivalents when transparent information is available about the entities at which the reserve assets are held. Therefore, in my view, taking all of this into consideration a relevant and informative company disclosure would include providing investors with the name of the stablecoin and the amount of the stablecoin that is classified as a cash equivalent, so investors can independently assess the liquidity risks more meaningfully and more comprehensively by utilizing broader information that is available in the capital markets and its emerging information.”
Such information could include the issuer, reserves, governance and management, she noted, so investors would get a more holistic look at the risks that holding the stablecoin would entail for a given company.
The board decided to require all entities to disclose the significant classes and related amounts of cash equivalents on an annual basis for each period that a statement of financial position is presented.
Entities should apply the amendments related to the classification of certain digital assets as cash equivalents on a modified prospective basis as of the beginning of the annual reporting period in the year of adoption.
FASB decided that entities should apply the amendments related to the disclosure of the significant classes and amounts of cash equivalents on a prospective basis as of the date of the most recent statement of financial position presented in the period of adoption.
The board will allow early adoption in both interim and annual reporting periods in which financial statements have not been issued or made available for issuance.
FASB also decided to permit entities to adopt the amendments to be illustrated in the examples related to the classification of certain digital assets as cash equivalents without the need to perform a preferability assessment as described in Topic 250, Accounting Changes and Error Corrections.
The board directed the staff to draft a proposed accounting standards update to be voted on by written ballot. The proposed update will have a 90-day comment period.
Senators introduced several pieces of tax-related legislation this week, including measures aimed at improving customer service at the Internal Revenue Service, cracking down on tax evasion and curbing the carried interest tax break, in addition to efforts in the House to repeal the Corporate Transparency Act.
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Senators Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, and Mark Warner, D-Virginia, teamed up on introducing a bipartisan bill, the
The bill would establish a dashboard to inform taxpayers of backlogs and wait times; expand electronic access to information and refunds; expand callback technology and online accounts; and inform individuals facing economic hardship about collection alternatives.
“Taxpayers deserve a simple, stress-free experience when dealing with the IRS,” Cassidy said in a statement Wednesday. “This bill makes the process quicker and easier for taxpayers to get the information they need.”
He also mentioned the bill during a
“I’m happy to meet with the team … and do all I can to make it as good as you want it to be,” said Bisignano.
“My bill would equip the IRS with the legislative mandate to create an online dashboard so that taxpayers can monitor average call wait time and budget time accordingly,” said Cassidy. He noted that the bill would allow a callback for taxpayers that might need to wait longer than five minutes to speak to a representative, and establish a program to identify and support taxpayers struggling to make ends meet by providing information about alternative payment methods, such as installments, partial payments and offers in compromise.
“I know people are kind of desperate and don’t know where to turn for cash, so I think this could really ease anxiety,” he added. “This legislation is bipartisan and is likely to pass this Congress.”
Cassidy and Warner
“Taxpayers shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to get basic answers from the IRS — and in the last year, those challenges have only gotten worse,” Warner said in a statement. “I am glad to reintroduce this bipartisan legislation on Tax Day to ease some of this frustration by increasing clear communication and making IRS resources more readily available.”
Stop CHEATERS Act
Also on Tax Day, a group of Senate Democrats and an independent who usually caucuses with Democrats teamed up to introduce the Stop Corporations and High Earners from Avoiding Taxes and Enforce the Rules Strictly (Stop CHEATERS) Act.
Senate Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, joined with Senators Angus King, I-Maine, Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island. The bill would provide additional funding for the IRS to strengthen and expand tax collection services and systems and crack down on tax cheating by the wealthy.
“Wealthy tax cheats and scofflaw corporations are stealing billions and billions from the American people by refusing to pay what they legally owe, and far too many of them are getting a free pass because Republicans gutted the enforcement capacity of the IRS,” Wyden said in a statement. “A rich tax cheat who shelters mountains of cash among a web of shell companies and passthroughs is likelier to be struck by lightning than face an IRS audit, and Republicans want to keep it that way. This bill is about making sure the IRS has the resources it needs to go after wealthy tax cheats while improving customer service for the vast majority of American taxpayers who follow the law every year.”
Earlier this week. Wyden also
The Stop CHEATERS Act would provide the IRS with additional funding for tax enforcement focused upon high-income tax evasion, technology operations support, systems modernization, and taxpayer services like free tax-payer assistance.
“As Congress seeks ways to fund much-needed policy priorities and address our growing national debt, there is one common sense solution that should have unanimous bipartisan support: let’s enforce the tax laws already on the books,” said King in a statement. “Our legislation will make sure the IRS has the resources it needs to confront the gap between taxes owed and taxes paid – while ensuring that our tax enforcement professionals are focused on the high-income earners who account for the most tax evasion. This is a serious problem with an easy solution; let’s pass this legislation and make sure every American pays what they owe in taxes.”
Carried interest
Wyden, King and Whitehouse also teamed up on another bill Thursday to close the carried interest tax break for hedge fund managers that
Carried interest is a form of compensation received by a fund manager in exchange for investment management services, according to a
Under the bill, the
“Our tax code is rigged to favor ultra-wealthy investors who know how to game the system to dodge paying a fair share, and there is no better example of how it works in practice than the carried interest loophole,” Wyden said in a statement. “For several decades now we’ve had a tax system that rewards the accumulation of wealth by the rich while punishing middle-class wage earners, and the effect of that system has been the strangulation of prosperity and opportunity for everybody but the ultra-wealthy. There are a lot of problems to fix to restore fairness and common sense to our tax code, and closing the carried interest loophole is a great place to start.”
Repealing Corporate Transparency Act
The House Financial Services Committee is also planning to markup a bill next Tuesday that would fully repeal the Corporate Transparency Act, which has already been significantly
If enacted, the repeal would eliminate beneficial ownership reporting requirements, removing a transparency measure designed to help law enforcement and national security officials identify who is behind U.S. companies.
“This repeal would turn the United States back into one of the easiest places in the world to set up anonymous shell companies, something Congress worked for years to fix,” said Erica Hanichak, deputy director of the FACT Coalition, in a statement. “These entities are routinely used to facilitate corruption, financial crime, and abuse. Rolling back the CTA doesn’t just weaken transparency, it signals to bad actors around the world that the U.S. is once again open for illicit business.”
The Internal Revenue Service rarely penalizes taxpayers who have high balances in foreign bank accounts and fail to file the proper forms, according to a new report.
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The
Taxpayers with specified foreign financial assets that meet a certain dollar threshold are also required to report the information to the IRS by filing Form 8938. Failure to file the form can result in penalties of up to $60,000. However, TIGTA’s previous reports have demonstrated that the IRS rarely enforces these penalties.
The IRS created an Offshore Private Banking Campaign initiative to address tax noncompliance related to taxpayers’ failure to file Form 8938 and information reporting associated with offshore banking accounts, but it’s had limited success.
Even though the initiative identified hundreds of individual taxpayers with significant foreign bank account deposits who failed to file Forms 8938, the campaign only resulted in relatively few taxpayer examinations and a small number of nonfiling penalties. The campaign identified 405 taxpayers with significant foreign account balances who appeared to be noncompliant with their FATCA reporting requirements.
The IRS used two ways to address the 405 noncompliant taxpayers: referral for examinations and the issuance of letters to them.
- 164 taxpayers (who had an average unreported foreign account balance of $1.3 billion) were referred for possible examination, but only 12 of the 164 were examined, with five having $39.7 million in additional tax and $80,000 in penalties assessed.
- 241 noncompliant taxpayers (who had an average unreported account balance of $377 million) received a combination of 225 educational letters (requiring no response from the taxpayers) and 16 soft letters (requiring taxpayers to respond). None of the 241 taxpayers were assessed the initial $10,000 FATCA nonfiling penalty.
“While taxpayers can hold offshore banking accounts for a number of legitimate reasons, some taxpayers have also used them to hide income and evade taxes,” said the report.
Significant assets and income are factors considered by the IRS when assessing whether taxpayers intentionally evaded their tax responsibilities, the report noted. Given the large size of the average unreported foreign account balances, these taxpayers probably have higher levels of sophistication and an awareness of their obligation to comply with the law.
TIGTA believes the IRS needs to establish specific performance measures to determine the effectiveness of the FATCA program. “If the IRS does not plan to enforce the FATCA provisions even where obvious noncompliance is identified, it should at least quantify the enforcement impact of its efforts,” said the report. “This will ensure that IRS decision makers have the information they need to determine if the FATCA program is worth the investment and improves taxpayer compliance.
TIGTA made three recommendations in the report, including revising Campaign 896 processes to include assessing FATCA failure to file penalties; assessing the viability of using Form 1099 data to identify Form 8938 nonfilers; and implementing additional performance measures to give decision makers comprehensive information about the effectiveness of the FATCA program. The IRS disagreed with two of TIGTA’s recommendations and partially agreed with the remaining recommendation. IRS officials didn’t agree to assess penalties in Campaign 896 or with implementing performance measures to assess the effectiveness of the FATCA program.
“From our perspective, TIGTA’s conclusions regarding IRS Campaign 896 are based, in part, on a misguided premise and overgeneralizations, including the treatment of ‘potential noncompliance’ as tantamount to ‘egregious noncompliance’ that warrants a monetary penalty without contemplating the variety of justifications that may exempt a taxpayer from having to file Form 8938,” wrote Mabeline Baldwin, acting commissioner of the IRS’s Large Business and International Division, in response to the report.
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