The recent tax season has been one of the easiest in recent memory, Accounting Today reported, but some tax professionals still see the need for improvement in some areas.

"Client withholding continues as a challenge," said Phyllis Jo Kubey, an enrolled agent in New York. "I provide 2023 tax projections with my client's 2022 tax returns, and I do my best to project as accurately as possible. Since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) did away with the old payroll system of exemptions, it's been more difficult to tweak client withholding to get it right—especially for clients who have multiple employers, short-term/seasonal employment and so on.”

"One of the biggest challenges we faced this tax season involved the filings of state pass-through entity taxes," said Cindy Ostrager, CPA and a partner at CohnReznick in New York. "This was a complex and time-consuming proposition given the nature of these taxes. Each state that has enacted a PTE tax has different eligibility requirements, election due dates and filing deadlines."

Time pressures were also noted by Scott Kadrlik, a CPA and managing partner at Meuwissen, Flygare, Kadrlik & Associates in Eden Prairie, Minn.

“The time that preparers have to properly file individual income tax returns for complex tax issues has been compressed," he said. "The brokers' 1099s are issued later and later every year, so that most of them are not available until March. The K-1s from pass-through entities are issued in March or not until as late as September. This means that the bulk of individual income tax returns are filed within a six-week period starting in March." 

"A big challenge for clients who took COVID retirement distributions in 2020 and spread the income over three years was the IRS's late issuance of updated instructions to Form 8915-F," added Kubey. “The IRS didn't publish the new instructions until March 31, and it took the software vendors additional time to incorporate the changes into their software. Many clients expecting early refunds had to wait to file until Form 8915-F and associated instructions' changes were available."

"The 2023 tax season isn't over in California and certain parts of Georgia and Florida," said Mary Kay Foss, a CPA in Walnut Creek, Calif. "The IRS gave us until October 15 to prepare, file and pay taxes for the 2022 tax year and for three quarters of 2023 estimates. We started out not telling the clients they had more time, but as they started to panic close to the due date, we revealed that more time was available.”