High-Level Summary
The 2025 tax software market reflects a maturing yet increasingly competitive environment where accounting professionals are balancing reliability, cost, and innovation. The latest nationwide survey of U.S. tax practitioners reveals that a small cluster of established platforms continues to dominate the landscape, but user satisfaction hinges less on features and more on usability, support, and overall value.
Drake Tax remains the front-runner in user ratings—valued for its stability, affordability, and responsive support—while competitors like UltraTax CS, Lacerte, and CCH Axcess Tax maintain strong but divided followings. The greatest pain point across the board continues to be rising software costs, followed by insufficient vendor training and integration challenges with other accounting applications.
Interestingly, despite the steady emergence of cloud-based platforms, a significant share of firms continue to rely on desktop installations, citing security, control, and performance preferences. However, the cloud transition is unmistakably accelerating among mid-sized and multi-office practices.
Beyond tax preparation, the landscape for tax planning and advisory software remains fragmented, signaling untapped opportunities for innovation, specialization, and integration in this domain. Overall, the data paints a picture of a profession at an inflection point—comfortable with its tools, but eager for smarter, more connected systems that enhance efficiency and client experience.
Key Insights & Implications for Firms / Consultants
Here are the more strategic takeaways and questions to ask for firms evaluating tax software:
| Insight | Implication / Actionable Thought |
|---|---|
| Persistence in market leaders | Switching costs and familiarity matter. Firms are cautious about moving away from established platforms. |
| Top overall rating: Drake Tax | Usability and support can outweigh sheer feature sets in user satisfaction. |
| Cost is the top complaint | Vendors should re-examine pricing models. Firms must balance total cost (licensing, training, support) vs. features. |
| Deficiency in vendor training | Firms should budget for internal training or peer learning, not expect full onboarding from vendors. |
| Cloud vs. local deployment | Cloud solutions (for example, CCH Axcess) are gaining ground, but many users are still reluctant to move off local install models. |
| Fragmented tax planning software space | No clear dominance in the tax planning/advisory software area; opportunity for consolidation or differentiation. |
1. Established players retain dominance — but switching remains low.
Practitioners show high loyalty to incumbent systems, primarily due to migration complexity, team familiarity, and long-standing data archives. Any new entrant must offer clear value to disrupt this inertia.
2. Drake Tax sets the user satisfaction benchmark.
Ease of use and strong customer support remain decisive factors, outweighing advanced automation or analytics capabilities. Firms consistently value dependability over novelty.
3. Pricing pressure continues to rise.
Cost dissatisfaction tops user concerns. Firms are increasingly evaluating total cost of ownership—including licensing, updates, and training—rather than focusing solely on headline pricing.
4. Training remains a critical gap.
Nearly two-thirds of users report no formal training from their vendor. As automation features expand, the absence of structured onboarding increases the dependency on technical support.
5. Cloud adoption is climbing, but not yet universal.
Firms remain split between cloud and on-premise deployments. While cloud solutions improve accessibility and collaboration, concerns about data security, vendor lock-in, and latency still limit full-scale migration.
6. Tax planning tools lag behind.
There is no clear leader in the advisory and tax planning software space, leaving firms to manage a patchwork of disconnected tools. This fragmentation suggests strong potential for consolidation or integration-driven innovation.
From a forward-looking perspective:
- Total cost of ownership (TCO) must be front and center in vendor selection. The sticker price is rarely the only expense.
- Firms should assess ecosystem and integrations (e.g., how well tax software links with accounting, document management, workflow tools).
- Encourage internal “super users” or champions to test features, share best practices, and reduce resistance to change.
- Monitor the shift toward cloud or hybrid deployments and assess cybersecurity, stability, latency, and vendor support risks.
- For firms offering tax advisory and planning services, the fragmented landscape offers an opening to test niche, modular tools and monitor which ones achieve momentum.
Illustrative Tables (based on survey data)
Below are representative tables reconstructed from the survey content.
Table 1: Market Share of Major Tax Software Platforms
| Tax Software | Percentage of Respondents Using It |
|---|---|
| UltraTax CS | 22.9 % |
| Drake Tax | 16.3 % |
| Lacerte | 15.8 % |
| CCH Axcess Tax | 12.5 % |
| ProSeries | 10.5 % |
| CCH ProSystem fx | 8.3 % |
| ATX | 4.6 % |
Table 2: Overall Ratings & Ease-of-Use (excerpt)
| Product | Overall Rating (1–5) | Ease of Use | Integration with other software |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drake Tax | Highest among peers | Very favorable | 3.0 (below average) |
| CCH Axcess Tax | Around average or slightly below for ease | 3.8 (vs average 4.2) | — |
| ATX | Slightly weak in ease of importing data | 3.1 (vs avg 3.4) | — |
Table 3: Training & Support Data
| Metric | Share / Rating |
|---|---|
| % of users who did not receive training from vendor | ~ 60 % |
| Highest “no training” rate (product) | ATX: 87 % |
| % of users who required technical support | 75.6 % |
| Avg rating for ease of getting support | 3.8 |
| Avg rating for quality of support | 3.8 |