A note before I start. For the next two or three issues, I want to step back from study tactics and talk about some fundamental questions facing the EA profession right now. The exam vendor change that took effect this spring is the immediate one, and it's where I'll begin. The next issue will tackle a question many of you are thinking about even if you haven't asked it out loud: is AI going to hurt the EA profession? After that, one more on the broader trajectory of the credential. Then we'll get back to the studying.

I'm a tax attorney working through the EA exam myself — Parts 1 and 3 passed on the first attempt under Prometric, with one part remaining under the new PSI regime. That's part of why this transition matters to me personally: I'm walking into the new system with no margin for a retake before my three-year credit window closes. If you're planning to test this year, you and I are in the same boat, and there are some things about the transition I don't think are being explained clearly enough anywhere else.

Prometric, the company that had administered the EA exam since 2006, stopped administering it on February 28, 2026. PSI Services took over on March 1. There is no testing between March 1 and June 30 — a four-month blackout, twice as long as the usual two-month spring maintenance pause. Scheduling for the new cycle opens May 1. The first exams under PSI happen July 1.

Two things to know about PSI. First, they are a real, established testing vendor — they administer roughly 28 million tests per year across many credentialing programs, including for federal agencies. They are not new to high-stakes testing. Second, and this matters, PSI's contract with the IRS is broader than Prometric's was: PSI is responsible not just for administering the exam but for developing and maintaining the questions themselves. So this isn't just a change in who runs the testing center. It's a simultaneous change in who writes the questions and who delivers them. Hold on to that — we'll come back to it.

The EA exam isn't a niche credential. PSI's contract is sized for more than 29,000 exam parts administered annually. There are more than 66,000 active enrolled agents worldwide, with about 12,700 in California alone — the state with the most EAs by a wide margin. Industry analysts have pointed to a concrete reason the credential continues to grow: fewer CPAs are emerging to fill vacancies, and employers are increasingly turning to EAs to address ongoing demand for taxation expertise. Part 1 pass rates have hovered in the mid-50s to low-60s percent range in recent years, which prep providers attribute in part to a larger pool of first-time test-takers entering the candidate pipeline. The candidate pool is expanding, and the vendor transition lands squarely on top of that growth.

Test centers may be closer. PSI has access to over 550 test centers across the country. I checked my own neighborhood, and the nearest PSI center is meaningfully closer than the nearest Prometric center was. I do not know whether this is true across the board — your mileage will vary — but it's worth checking when scheduling opens May 1.

Remote proctoring is new. For the first time, EA candidates will have the option to take the exam from home with online proctoring. The IRS has been clearer that this is available for international candidates than for U.S. ones, so if you are in the U.S. and you want this option, plan to verify availability when scheduling opens. My personal advice: do not take the home option for the first administration. Wait until PSI has worked the bugs out of their system in this specific program. More on why in a moment.

Linear on the Fly Testing. This is the technical name for how PSI delivers questions. In plain English: every candidate gets a different version of the exam, assembled from a large question bank, statistically equivalent in difficulty but with different specific questions. The practical implication: comparing notes with another candidate after the exam will be less useful than it used to be, because you literally took different exams. And the strategy of trying to memorize a fixed question bank — never a good idea anyway — is now completely dead.

The subject matter and content outline are unchanged. Three parts, same passing standard, same general subject matter. What you have been studying is still what you need to know. For the underlying sources, the IRS's own sample test questions page is the best anchor.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law in July 2025, becomes testable on the EA exam for the first time on May 1, 2026. The IRS updates the exam every spring to incorporate the prior year's tax law changes, and OBBBA is the largest update in years. This means July 2026 candidates face two simultaneous changes: a new vendor developing and administering the exam, and a new body of tax law being tested for the first time. If you are using a prep course that has not been updated for OBBBA, you are studying yesterday's exam. Verify with your provider before you spend another hour on their materials.

The California Bar Exam went through its own transition for its February 2025 administration, and the result was a mess. Here's the part that matters for us: the State Bar didn't just change its software delivery vendor. It simultaneously changed who was writing the questions — moving away from the established National Conference of Bar Examiners multiple-choice set to questions drafted by a new contractor and a psychometric consultant, some of which were produced with the assistance of ChatGPT by non-lawyers. That combination — new questions plus new delivery platform — is the exact configuration the EA exam is now entering with PSI.

The consequences in California were severe. Roughly 60% of candidates reported the exam software froze or crashed during the multiple-choice section, and about three-quarters reported the copy-and-paste functions on the written portion did not work. When the State Bar analyzed performance afterward, the AI-assisted questions turned out to perform measurably worse than the human-written ones, with nearly half flagged for "performance issues" — about three times the rate of questions from other sources. The State Bar petitioned the California Supreme Court to lower the passing score to compensate for the mess, and the court approved it.

I am not predicting that PSI's first EA administration will go anything like that badly. The differences matter: PSI is an established testing vendor with decades of experience and a reputation to protect; the IRS has been more transparent about what is changing than the California Bar was; and the PSI contract does not, as far as we know, involve AI-generated questions. But the structural parallel — a new contractor simultaneously handling question development and delivery, for a high-stakes exam, on a tight timeline — is worth knowing about. The candidates always bear the risk when these transitions go wrong.

Schedule early in the window. The first slots will fill fast as four months of pent-up demand collides with limited initial test center availability.

Choose an in-person test center over remote proctoring for the first few months, until PSI's systems have been stress-tested on real EA administrations.

If anything goes wrong on test day, document it immediately — in writing, before you leave the test center. Software freezes, system crashes, a proctor doing something strange: write it down on the spot. File any incident report PSI offers, and follow up in writing with the IRS Return Preparer Office. The California candidates who got partial relief from their disaster were the ones who documented their issues at the time, not the ones who waited.

And finally: don't let any of this scare you out of testing. The EA credential is still worth pursuing, the content you are studying is still the content you need, and the vast majority of July candidates will sit the exam without incident. I will be one of them. So will you.

Next issue: is AI going to hurt the EA profession? The honest answer is more interesting than either side of the usual debate.