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iven how central professional-grade return
Results and methodology
preparation software is to tax practices,
Geach year the JofA and The Tax Adviser ask
CPAs what product they use and how it worked The 2022 survey was conducted May 4–18. Invitations were sent
for them in the most recent season. For the 2022 by email to 75,553 AICPA members who had indicated they have a
season, seven products again predominated, and professional interest in taxation. The results reflect answers of 1,778
they are the ones tallied in most of this article’s respondents who said that they prepared tax year 2021 returns for
charts and discussion. For last year’s survey, see a fee.
“2021 Tax Software Survey.”
PRODUCTS COVERED AND PROFILE OF
RESPONDENTS Shares of Respondents and Product and Company
The survey allowed respondents to select among 13 Information.” About the
listed products and to write in others. Those used by The survey asked about the size of the firm in author
the greatest percentages of respondents were: which respondents prepared returns, as certain soft- Paul Bonner is a
■ UltraTax CS, 20%, down from 21.6% in 2021; ware products tend to be used in bigger or smaller JofA senior news
■ Drake Tax, 17.1%, about the same as last year; firms. For example, Drake Tax was the predominant writer. To comment
■ Lacerte, 13.3%, down from 14.6% in 2021; choice among sole practitioners at 30%, followed by on this article or
■ ProSeries, 12.8%, up from 11.4% in 2021; ProSeries at 23%. At the other end of the spectrum to suggest an
■ CCH Axcess Tax, 9.1%, the same as in 2021; — firms of 501 or more tax preparers — CCH idea for another
■ CCH ProSystem fx, 8.8%, down from 9.2% last Axcess Tax was the most used at 37% (and was used article, contact him
year; and by only 3.7% of single-preparer firms) (see the table at Paul.Bonner@
■ ATX, 6.5%, up from 5.5% in 2021. “Favorites by Firm Size”). UltraTax CS and Lacerte aicpa-cima.com or
Lacerte and ProSeries are Intuit Inc. products, were the most consistent in their proportion of use 919-402-4434.
while ATX, CCH Axcess Tax, and CCH ProSystem across all firm sizes.
fx are Wolters Kluwer products. UltraTax CS is a Similarly, the product used by a firm tended to
Thomson Reuters product. vary according to the percentages of business versus
The remaining six products (GoSystem Tax RS, individual returns that the firm prepared. Individual
Intuit ProConnect Tax Online, TaxAct, TaxSlayer returns were a majority of returns prepared by users
Pro, TaxWise, and TurboTax) together accounted of all major products, but that was true of 90% of
for 11.1% of responses, and another 1.3% of users of Drake Tax, followed by ATX and ProSeries
respondents wrote in an entry. For relative usage of at 88.7% and 88.2%, respectively. Individual returns
all 13 products and more background on the seven were over half the workload for 61% of CCH Ax-
major products, such as available packages and cess Tax users and 67% of users of CCH ProSystem
their basic features, see “2022 Tax Software Survey: fx. Business returns were nearly 20% of the returns

Favorites by firm size

Number of preparers
1 2 to 5 6 to 20 21 to 100 101 to 500 501 or more
ATX 11.9% 6.2% 0.5% 4.9% 12.3% 1.6%
CCH Axcess Tax 3.7% 7.5% 14.4% 30.1% 20.5% 37.1%
CCH ProSystem fx 5.7% 9.7% 17.1% 15.5% 8.2% 16.1%
Drake Tax 30.1% 18.4% 5.4% 14.6% 9.6% 8.1%
Lacerte 13.2% 16.2% 20.3% 11.7% 12.3% 14.5%
ProSeries 22.8% 13.5% 3.2% 7.8% 13.7% 8.1%
UltraTax CS 12.7% 28.6% 39.2% 15.5% 23.3% 14.5%
Percentage of respondents saying their firms are in that size category who used each software. Some columns do not add up to 100% due to rounding.

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