CPA Examination Procedure

The popularity of US CPA is growing immensely in India. However, a lot of students face a lot of administrative challenges such as evaluation for examination/ licensure, re-evaluation/ transfer of grades to other State board, scheduling of exams etc. This article will try to answer some of these questions and will help a CPA aspirant understand as to what exactly is the process is of becoming a US CPA in India.

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Like the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), the CPA exam is administered by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). The CPA exam has 4 subjects :-

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1.????FAR – Financial Accounting and Reporting

2.????REG – Regulation

3.????AUD – Auditing and Attestation

4.????BEC – Business Environment and Concepts

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All the students appearing for the CPA exam have an 18 month window in which they need to clear the exams. The window begins from the time you passed the first exam. If you don’t pass the remaining 3 exams within the next 18 months of taking the first exam, you will lose credit for the first exam that you passed. For instance, if a student takes his FAR exam on Jan 1, 2022, and clears it, then, he/she will have to pass the remaining 3 exams by June 30, 2023 or else he/she will have to reappear for the FAR exam.

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The student can himself schedule the exam on Prometric depending on the availability of slots. But before coming to that, let’s first discuss how should a student start the CPA journey.

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The first step in the commencement of the CPA journey is to enroll for the CPA course with any of the course providers available in India. Due to the growing popularity of CPA course in India, there are now multiple institutes who have tied up with the US course providers to provide study material, video lectures, question bank and coaching classes for the CPA course. These course providers broadly include Becker’s, Wiley etc.

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The study material and question bank for both Becker’s as well as Wiley is equally good and it is entirely upto the choice of students as to which provider he would want to go for. Please note that there are other CPA course providers as well in the market such as Roger, Surgent etc. I had studied from Becker’s and cleared all the exams in my first attempt, but I have also looked at the study material for other courses as well and found them to have equally good material and question bank.

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Most of the people who pursue CPA in India are also working full time in an MNC. Hence, studying for CPA along with slogging 10-12 hours a day for work become a little difficult. However, it is not impossible. Thankfully, the CPA course is not as lengthy as the Indian CA and hence, even if you spare 2 hours everyday during the weekdays and 5-6 hours each on weekends, then, CPA can be a cakewalk for you.

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The exam pattern of the CPA exam is as follows:-

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Auditing and Attestation (AUD)

4 Hours

50% MCQs and 50% task-based simulations

Business Environment and?Concepts (BEC)

?4 Hours

50% MCQs ,30% task-based simulations and 15% Written Communication Tests

Financial Accounting and?Reporting (FAR)

?4 Hours

50% MCQs and 50% task-based simulations

Regulation (REG)

?4 Hours

50% MCQs and 50% task-based simulations

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The second part of the exam is the evaluation for examination. There are approx. 50 state boards in the US and each state board has its eligibility criteria for the student to be eligible to sit for the CPA exam from that board. Broadly, the eligibility criteria revolves around 2 things:-

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1.????US Residency requirement

2.????Education Requirements – Most of the states allow you to take the exam with 120 credits, but few allow you to take the exam only with 150 credits.

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Being a resident of India, we cannot opt for any of the state board that has a US residency requirement and hence, we are left with few options to choose the state board from which we would like to take the CPA exam. The second part is the education requirements. To be eligible to take the CPA exam, you need to get your college degrees evaluated from a state recognized evaluation agency. Please note that each state has its own list of approved evaluation agencies, and this list keeps on changing. The NASBA International Evaluation Services (NIES) is accepted by most of the State Boards in the US. The NIES has one more advantage, i.e. instead of candidate choosing the state himself after doing the research on various State Boards, the candidate can apply for an undecided jurisdiction. Once the candidate does that, the NIES after going through the transcripts and attested degrees of your university education, will let you know the best 3 state boards from which you could register as a CPA candidate. Generally, NIES gives 30 credits for a one year education, and hence a 3 year B.com degree will give you 90 credits. Hence, it is highly recommended that the student pursue bridge courses such as M.com, diploma in public accounting etc. either through regular or correspondence to get the remaining credits necessary for meeting the eligibility criteria to sit for the CPA exam. A 2 year bridge course will give you 60 credits, and hence, will meet the education requirement to sit for the exam or apply for the licensure post completion of all the 4 parts of the CPA exam. Once you complete the first year of your bridge course, you could get the marksheet attested from the university and asked them to send it directly to NIES. The NIES will give 120 credits in total for a 3 year B.com degree plus 1 year bridge course. The documentation requirements for getting your degree evaluated from NIES are:-

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·??????Annual University Mark Sheets (Consolidated mark sheets are acceptable from University of Delhi and IGNOU)

·??????Provisional Certificate/Bachelor Degree

·??????Master Degree with annual mark sheets (if applicable)

·??????NIES only accept attested/notarized copies that are signed and stamped by the university registrar or controller of examinations. They do not accept annual mark sheets that are attested by a representative of the school/college under the university. Please contact the office for more information.

·??????Official documents must be received via postal service directly from the issuing institution in an unopened university sealed envelope in order for the evaluation to be released to the requested Board of Accountancy.

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Note: Post completion of all the 4 parts of the exam, the candidate can apply for the license from the same State board from which he had appeared for the exam, provided he meets the licensure criteria for that state board. Hence, I would again recommend the candidate to apply for an undecided jurisdiction for the licensure process.

?Once you receive the evaluation from the NIES, and have received the required 120 credits, you will get an email from the state board that they have accepted the evaluation and now, the candidate can apply for NTS (Notice to Schedule).

?If a candidate wishes to take the exam in the US, then, he could apply for NTS as a domestic candidate. However, if a candidate wishes to take the exam outside US, say in India, then, he will have to apply for NTS as an international candidate and hence, pay additional fee accordingly.

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Once you apply for NTS and make the payment for the subject that you wish to take the exam, you would receive an email stating that the NTS is valid for 6 months and hence, you could take the exam for anytime in the next 6 months. You can apply for NTS for all the 4 subjects together or just one subject. However, you can only take the exam once for the NTS issued to you. Let’s say, you applied for Audit NTS and failed in that exam, you will have to re-apply for audit exam NTS in order to reappear for the exam. You can reapply for the NTS anytime after you have received the result of your exam. If you have applied for NTS for 4 subjects and failed in one of them, then, you could apply for the NTS of that one exam separately and the NTS for the remaining 3 would still remain valid for those 3 subjects.

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Once you receive the NTS, you could go to the Prometric website and then, schedule your exam depending on the availability of slots.