How to Get More Tax Clients Before the Season Starts

Most tax practices do not lose new clients for lack of demand. They lose them in late January, when the phone rings during an appointment, the voicemail fills, and last year's clients quietly book with someone who answered first.

Getting more tax clients starts months earlier, with the people already in your files, an intake plan for the rush, and a public presence that answers the question every prospect asks: can I trust this person with my return?

How Do You Get More Tax Clients?

This guide is for tax preparers, enrolled agents and small accounting or CPA firms. Every number in it links to the source we checked.

Start With the Clients Already in Your Files

The cheapest new return is the one you prepared last year. The 2025 NATP Fee Study media highlights, published in November 2025, show returning clients at 87% of respondents' client base and new clients at 13%. At that mix, losing one returning client in 20 cancels out roughly a third of the new clients a typical year brings in.

So the first marketing job of the season is a reminder, not an ad. Send it in December or early January, before clients start shopping, with your opening date, a booking link and a document checklist.

The IRS has not announced the 2027 filing season start date as of this writing. For reference, it named Monday, January 26, 2026, as the opening of the 2026 filing season in a release dated January 8, 2026. Plan your reminder around late January and update the date when the IRS publishes it.

Clients who skipped a year are a second list. A short fall note costs nothing and reaches people who already know your work. Our post on why referrals from Facebook groups fall short explains why a list you own beats waiting for word of mouth.

Plan January Intake Before It Arrives

Capacity is the quiet limit on growth: you can only take as many new returns as February can hold, and NATP's study shows how lopsided the year is.

With 64% of revenue landing between February and April, set these up before January:

• Block intake slots. Decide how many new-client appointments you can take each week and put them on a booking calendar, so prospects pick a time instead of trading voicemails.
• Book returning clients first. Offer them early slots in your December reminder, before new clients fill the calendar.
• Publish a document checklist. A page that lists what to bring cuts the back-and-forth that eats February.
• Set a cutoff for new clients. A clear "new clients accepted through" date protects your existing clients and sets honest expectations.

A website built for accounting and tax firms should carry that booking link and checklist on every service page, with the client portal one click away.

Answer the Inquiries That Come In After Hours

Prospects do not only reach out during business hours, and during the season you are with clients all day. The call that comes in at 4 p.m. or the form submitted at 9 p.m. sits until you surface.

The fix is a reply that goes out in minutes, even when nobody is free: a text back after a missed call, and a confirmation with a booking link after a form. Our guide to stopping lead loss after missed calls covers how that works in practice.

Two rules matter more for tax practices. Never ask for Social Security numbers, account numbers or tax documents by text or a plain web form; use your secure portal. And keep the inquiry form short: name, contact, the help needed and a good time to talk.

That is the system we set up in Grow for accounting and tax firms: missed call text back, online consultation booking, appointment reminders and tax season reminders for past clients. It runs $149, $199 or $299 a month with no setup fee.

Get Found on the Map for the Work You Want

When someone searches "tax preparer near me," Google often shows map results near the top, and your Business Profile is what they see there. Google says on its help page about how local results are ranked that results are mainly based on relevance, distance and prominence, and that "businesses with complete and accurate info are more likely to show up."

For a tax practice, complete and accurate means:

• The right primary category, and secondary categories that match what you actually do.
• Each service listed one by one: individual returns, business returns, bookkeeping, payroll, back taxes, tax planning.
• Seasonal hours. Update them when you add evening or Saturday hours in February, and change them back in May. Wrong hours send prospects elsewhere.
• Real photos of the office and the people, not a logo alone.
• Posts that match the calendar, such as your opening date, the April deadline and extension season.

We run Business Profiles for accounting firms to that checklist. The profile also needs a site behind it, with search work built around each service you sell so a search for back tax help lands on a page about exactly that.

Ask for a Review When the Return Is Filed

Reviews are where a prospect decides if you are trustworthy enough to see their finances. BrightLocal's 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey found that 97% of consumers read reviews for local businesses, and that 74% look for reviews written in the last three months.

That second number is a problem built into tax work. If every review arrives between February and April, your newest one is seven months old by November. Spread the asks across the year: after each filed return, after extension work in the fall, after a bookkeeping cleanup, and after an advisory meeting.

Asking works. The same BrightLocal survey reports that 83% of people asked to leave a review went on to leave one. The best moment is right after the client hears their return was accepted, with a direct link to your Google review form.

Replies need care. Never confirm in a public reply that the reviewer is a client, and never discuss anything about their return, refund or fees for their year. Answer in general terms and invite them to call. A review program built for accounting firms handles the asking, the alerts and the replies without exposing client details.

What You Can and Cannot Say in Your Marketing

Tax preparers have advertising rules most small businesses do not.

Start with the basics. The IRS PTIN requirements page says anyone who prepares or assists in preparing federal returns for pay must have a valid 2027 PTIN before preparing returns, and the fee for a new PTIN or a renewal is $18.75.

The Annual Filing Season Program is voluntary. Non-credentialed preparers who complete the continuing education (18 hours, including a six-hour refresher course with a test, for most participants) receive a Record of Completion and are listed in the IRS public directory of preparers.

The IRS AFSP frequently asked questions set the wording limits. You may say you hold a valid AFSP Record of Completion for the calendar year. You may not use the terms "certified," "enrolled" or "licensed" to describe it, or say the IRS has endorsed you.

Circular 230 adds rules for practitioners. Section 10.30, at 31 CFR 10.30, bars misleading advertising, and bars enrolled agents and others it covers from using "certified" or implying they work for the IRS. If you publish fees, the section requires you to honor them for at least 30 calendar days after the schedule was last published.

One more line to avoid: fees tied to the size of the refund. The IRS tells taxpayers in Topic 254 on choosing a preparer to "avoid tax return preparers who base their fees on a percentage of the refund." An ad that hints at that model works against you with exactly the careful clients you want.

This is general information, not legal advice. Check the current rules for your credential before you publish.

Why the Busiest Week Is Also Your Best Chance

The volume is real, and a big share of it goes through paid preparers. The IRS filing season statistics show that through April 17 of the 2026 season, the IRS had received 137.6 million e-filed returns, with 72.8 million of them from tax professionals. That is just over half.

NATP's 87% returning-client figure suggests most of them come back to the same preparer, which is why winning them early matters. The IRS's Topic 254 also tells taxpayers to think about if a preparer will still be around "for months or years after filing the return." Say plainly on your site that you answer questions year-round, and show it with current hours and recent reviews.

The logic is the same one we lay out for trades in our guide to owned versus rented contractor leads: the clients you earn through your own profile, site and follow-up keep coming back, while bought attention stops when the spending does.

Turn Returning Clients Into Advisory Work

More work per client is the other way to grow, and it fills the quiet months. In NATP's 2025 study, 48% of respondents said their practice was growing. Among them, 78% named more tax returns as an important or major growth factor, and 54% named tax consulting, ahead of bookkeeping at 38%.

Yet the same study puts advisory services at 4% of gross revenue and business consulting at 3%, with tax form preparation at 65%. That gap is the opportunity.

Complexity is the opening. In June 2026, CPA Practice Advisor reported that sole practitioners and firms with 2 to 10 professionals in the AICPA's PCPS CPA Firm Top Issues Survey both ranked managing tax law complexity as their top current issue. If it is hard for you, it is harder for your clients.

Practical ways to offer it:

• A spring follow-up. After a client's return is filed, flag one thing that could change next year's result, such as withholding or estimated payments, and offer a planning meeting in the fall.
• A fall planning season. Use October and November for year-end planning meetings, which also earns reviews outside the rush.
• Business clients. Offer bookkeeping or payroll to clients who file a Schedule C.
• A page for each advisory service. Name it the way a client would, such as tax planning or small business bookkeeping.

Our marketing plan for accounting and tax firms is built around this: year-round services first, so the quiet months carry more of the load.

Get Ready for Tax Season Now

The practices that grow next season are setting up now: reminders for returning clients, a booking calendar for January, a reply that goes out after hours, a Business Profile with the right hours, and reviews that stay fresh all year. None of it requires a bigger ad budget. It requires doing it before the rush.

If you want help with the website, the profile, the reviews or the follow-up, we will look at what you have and tell you plainly what we would fix first. Book a free discovery call and bring your questions.