I've made the comment before that the market may simply not have room for all the chains as the growth of D-I-Y shrinks retail demand. There's no reason to believe that this trend will do anything but accelerate this year. Add on the probable death of refund anticipation loans and a lot of chains, and independent preparers, lose another appeal they had.
This isn't good or bad news for full-service firms or the year-round tax-only preparers. Many of them weren't going to get this business anyway.
We will know the body count in the next few months as the public chains, H&R Block and Jackson Hewitt, report their results as will Liberty Tax, which reports its results, something franchisors must do in a number of states. Mid-season results showed Block stopped losing market share, but it's certainly not poised for robust growth while Liberty was doing OK
But somewhere in the last two years, there was a signal that an era had ended and that's the era of rapid growth in store count.