The Best Time To Change Your CPA Is Right Now. Here's Why.

Fall is a season of change. The temperature is changing, your wardrobe, the clocks, kids headed back to school.

But changing your CPA? Probably not on the top of your list of things to tackle. The relationship is familiar. They know the history. And the return got filed, so what's the problem?

The problem is that filed is not the same as planned. Accuracy is the absolute bare minimum you should expect from anyone who touches your taxes or has any impact on your finances. Accuracy isn't a strategy. The real question is whether anyone is actively looking for ways to reduce what you owe.

If that question has been sitting in the back of your mind, October is the month to act on it. Not January. Not after next filing season. Now.

Last year is officially in the books

October 15 is the final extended deadline for 2025 individual returns. Partnership and S corporation returns closed out a month earlier, on September 15. Once those are filed, your current advisor's work on 2025 is done.

That makes this the cleanest handoff point of the entire year. No one is mid-return. A new advisor isn't inheriting a half-finished project or chasing documents someone else already requested. They start with a complete, filed year as a baseline, which is exactly what a good advisor wants before making recommendations.

Switch in March and you are asking someone to learn your business in the middle of their busiest season, under deadline pressure. Switch in October and they have time to actually study it.

...but there is plenty that can be done this year.

From mid-October to December 31, roughly eleven weeks remain in the 2026 tax year. That is enough time for a new advisor to review your last two or three returns, understand how your business actually makes money, and act on what they find before the year closes.

Most of the planning that matters has a December 31 deadline attached. A few examples of what a fresh review can still change for 2026:

• Owner compensation and distributions. If you run an S corporation, the split between W-2 salary and distributions affects payroll tax, your qualified business income deduction, and retirement contributions all at once. Payroll can still be adjusted before year end. After December 31, the year's mix is locked.
• Equipment and capital purchases. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act made 100% bonus depreciation permanent for qualifying property acquired after January 19, 2025, and raised the Section 179 limit to $2.5 million. Assets must be placed in service by December 31 to count for 2026.
• Research and development costs. Domestic R&D spending is immediately deductible again for tax years beginning in 2025 and later. Paired with the R&D credit, this reaches far more companies than the ones with labs. Manufacturers, engineering firms, and software-driven businesses often qualify and never claim it.
• Pass-through entity tax elections. The state and local tax deduction cap rose to $40,000, but it phases down once modified adjusted gross income passes $500,000. For S corporation and partnership owners in states that offer a pass-through entity tax, that election is often still the better route, and the payment generally has to be made by December 31.
• Retirement plan design. A cash balance plan layered on a 401(k) can let owners in their 50s and 60s deduct well into six figures a year. Some plan decisions can wait until filing. Salary deferrals run through payroll cannot.
• Gifting and estate moves. The federal estate and gift tax exemption is $15 million per person in 2026, and it is now permanent rather than scheduled to drop. That removes the urgency, not the need to plan. Annual exclusion gifts for 2026 still have to be completed by December 31.

None of these is exotic. They are the ordinary tools of proactive planning. The question is whether anyone has brought them to you, with your numbers attached, before the window closed.

Waiting until January costs you a full year

The instinct is to wait for a natural break: after the holidays, after this return, after things settle down. But an advisor hired in January is preparing a 2026 return for a year that is already over. They can catch mistakes. They can sometimes amend. What they cannot do is go back and change how the year was structured.

That makes 2027 the earliest year a January hire can actually plan. You will have given up an entire tax year to avoid one uncomfortable conversation in October.

The math adds up quickly. Say a year-end review identifies $150,000 of equipment you were planning to buy in February anyway. Placed in service in December instead, at a 37% federal rate, that $150,000 deduction lands on your 2026 return and cuts roughly $55,500 of federal tax a year earlier. That is one move, for one business, found by one person who had time to look.

Then filing season arrives. From February through April, and again from August through October, CPA firms are in production mode. Onboard during that stretch and you get your advisor at the moment they have the least time for you. October through December is when a good advisor has room to do the thinking you are paying for.

Five questions to ask before you renew the relationship

You don't need to fire anyone to start this process. You need honest answers to a few questions. If you can't answer yes to most of them, the relationship is giving you less than it could.

1. Did your advisor contact you this year, before you contacted them, with a specific idea to lower your taxes?
2. Have you had a planning meeting in the last 12 months that wasn't about gathering documents for a return?
3. Do you know what your projected 2026 tax bill is right now, in October?
4. Has anyone reviewed whether your entity structure still fits your business at its current size?
5. If you might sell or transition the business in the next five years, has your advisor walked you through what that will cost in tax and how to reduce it?

A no on question 3 is the most telling. If nobody has projected this year's bill, nobody is managing it.

Switching is less work than you think

Most of the friction is imagined. In practice, a transition looks like this:

1. A review meeting. You share your last two or three years of business and personal returns. A new advisor reads them for missed opportunities and structural issues before you commit to anything.
2. A year-end plan. If the review turns up real opportunity, you get a short list of moves to make before December 31, with dollar estimates attached.
3. The records request. Your new firm requests prior workpapers, depreciation schedules, and carryforward details from your current CPA. This is routine. Firms handle it every day, and you don't have to manage the conversation.
4. The 2026 return. Your new advisor prepares it already knowing the plan behind it.

Your current CPA will be fine. This is a business decision, and the professionals on the other side of it understand that better than anyone. And it doesn't have to be all or nothing. Many owners keep their existing preparer for compliance and bring in a strategic advisor alongside them.

Get a second look while it still counts

Your 2025 return is filed. The 2026 tax year is still open. That overlap only lasts a few more weeks, and it is the most leverage you will have all year.

Cunningham & Associates works with business owners and families on exactly this kind of review: a fresh look at your returns, your structure, and your year-end options, with specific numbers attached. If nothing needs to change, you will know that too, and you will know it with confidence.