Last week I began a new mini-series on the 2026 Awards. This year the awards will see a fourth 'group', "Top 25 Tax Advisors" will come alongside the Top 100 ProAdvisors, the Top 25 Up-n-coming ProAdvisors, and the Top 50 International ProAdvisors.
Although the number of U.S. ProAdvisors providing tax as a primary or secondary focus of their practice has grown, we also know that there are professionals offering tax services who are not QuickBooks ProAdvisors.
Insightful Accountant believes the time has come to recognize tax professionals who strive to become the 'best of the best' in offering tax services, regardless of QuickBooks ProAdvisor status. But, including non-ProAdvisor Tax practitioners within the Top 100 awards wouldn't be appropriate.
We are therefore establishing a new tax-focused Award Group that allows recognition of both ProAdvisors with a tax practice and other tax advisors (who are not ProAdvisors).
For 2026, we will be including this new tax group within the U.S. application form, in the same way as the Up-n-Comer group. Each individual may participate in the groups in which they score the best. To facilitate this, one of the questions in the new application is designed to allow participants to select the groups in which they participate.
A maximum of twenty-five (25) Tax Advisors will be recognized as part of the 2026 awards.
For example, in the sample question below, participants can select whether they provide tax services to clients or through Intuit's "TurboTax Live" support.
Tax professionals could even select both of these options if they have their own clients as well as supporting "Turbo Tax Live" clients.
Tax Professionals must provide information about the number of clients they support, regardless of the source of those clients. When supporting their own clients, they will need to report the number of clients using one of Intuit's Tax products, as shown in the question below.
If the Tax Professional supports clients as part of Intuit TurboTax Live, then they will need to provide the number (approximate) of clients they supported as part of the TurboTax Live team during 2025, for the 2024 Tax Season.
When a U.S. applicant makes selections like those above, they will automatically activate other parts of the application form designed to capture specific 'tax-related' activities, including certification and training.
Non-ProAdvisors who meet the eligibility criteria based on the information addressed above will be required to document their Intuit Academy Tax Level 1 certification as shown in the sample question below.
Additional Tax and Bookkeeping Training will bolster a tax professional's ranking against the standard set for this award group.
Tax Professionals will also be eligible to complete other ‘fill-in-the-blank’ tax training opportunities made available by the IRS and other sponsoring tax training providers. Formatting will be similar to that published in last week’s feature.
Next Tuesday's feature will continue our mini-series on 2026 Award Application Revisions.
We look forward to YOUR participation in the 2026 Awards process.
Thanks to our ProAdvisor Awards Sponsors (shown below).You can find out more about our sponsors and request information by visiting our ProAdvisor Awards Sponsors webpage!
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