January 2001

Calif. Set to Act on 150 Hr. Rule

SACRAMENTO, CA—The state of California is getting ready to adopt the 150 hour educational requirement for CPA licensure, following a national trend to adopt the regulation for men and women looking to enter the profession.

The California State Board of Accountancy has confirmed that it told the state Legislature that it supports the 150 hour requirement, setting the stage for the state to enact the rule which would require college accounting majors to have completed 150 hours of study to sit for the CPA exam.

In the “Sunset Review Report,” sent to the Joint Legislative Sunset Review Committee of the California Legislature, the Board said that, if California fails to establish the 150 semester hour requirement, “less qualified individuals may take the examination in California specifically because educational requirements are less rigorous than in other states.”

Under the rule, accounting students in California would be required to take the equivalent of 150 semester hours of college education, though California’s Board of Accountancy is not recommending any specific mandatory courses in the new rule. The Board believes that the additional educational hours will give applicants a broader range of knowledge and result in “more well-rounded CPAs.”

The 150 hour rule is also one of the concepts built into the Uniform Accountancy Act (UAA), a joint effort of the American Institute of CPAs and the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) to develop uniform, nationwide standards for the CPA profession.

Forty-eight of the 54 U.S. jurisdictions that license CPAs have enacted legislation establishing the 150 hour requirement for future licensed practitioners.

If enacted in the coming term, California’s proposed regulation, which expects to have 150 hours in effect by Jan. 1, 2005, will be mandatory before New Yorks current requirement is. New Yorks rule is slated to become effective nearly five years later on Aug. 1, 2009.

However, the NYSSCPA is also pushing for legislation that would move up the start date on its requirement, according to Dennis O’Leary, the NYSSCPA’s director of government relations. “Our UAA bill will advance the start-up date for the 150 hour curriculum to Aug. 1, 2005,” O’Leary said.

Under current New York rules, college and university accounting departments in New York state have already begun registering their 150 hour curriculum programs, said O’Leary.

O’Leary also pointed out that, under California’s proposed bill, only 120 hours would be required for prospective licensees to sit for the exam (the additional 30 hours would be needed for the actual license), compared to New York’s requirement that anyone applying for licensure would need to complete the 150 hour curriculum.