Oregon Administrative Rules
Chapter 801 - OREGON BOARD OF ACCOUNTANCY
Division 10 - FEES, APPLICATIONS, REQUIREMENTS, PROCEDURES, AND P.C.'S
Section 801-010-0065 - Qualifications for Licensure
Universal Citation: OR Admin Rules 801-010-0065
Current through Register Vol. 63, No. 9, September 1, 2024
(1) Requirements. Applicants for the license of Certified Public Accountant must meet the following requirements:
(a) Complete and pass all sections of the CPA
exam
(b) Complete and pass an
ethics exam that has been adopted by the Board with a score of 90 or above;
and
(c) Show satisfactory evidence
that the candidate has successfully completed 150 semester hours or 225 quarter
hours of education that meet the requirements in OAR
801-010-0050(3);
and
(d) Have a minimum of 12 months
and at least 2000 hours of supervised employment.
(e) Applicants for the CPA license must
obtain the experience in each of the seven competencies as described in
sections (2) through (4) of this rule.
(f) Except as provided in section six (6) of
this rule, the experience, ethics and examination requirements must be obtained
and completed within eight years immediately preceding the date the application
for license was received at the Board office.
(2) Experience Requirements:
(a)
Supervisor Licensee is a
person who qualifies under this rule as a supervisor for the purpose of
verifying the experience requirement of an applicant for a CPA license under
OAR 801-010-0065 or the experience
requirement of an applicant for a public accountant license under
801-010-0100.
(b) To qualify as a supervisor licensee the
person providing supervision must hold an active CPA license issued by any
state or a PA license issued under ORS
673.100 during the period of
supervision and for at least five of the past seven years immediately prior to
such supervision. Notwithstanding, a public accountant (PA) may not act as a
supervising licensee or verify an applicant's experience relating to
attestation services.
(c) A
supervisor licensee must provide direct supervision over an applicant and shall
certify to the Board whether or not the applicant has gained qualifying
experience under this rule.
(d)
"Direct supervision" as used in this rule means that there is a
regular and meaningful interaction between the supervisor licensee and the
person being supervised in terms of planning, coordinating, guiding,
inspecting, controlling, and evaluating activities, and having authority over
the employee being supervised. A licensee acting as a consultant or independent
contractor to the applicant's employer will not meet the requirement of direct
supervision.
(e) The experience
required under ORS 673.040 consists of activities
generally performed by Oregon licensed CPAs and PAs engaged in the practice of
public accountancy. Experience obtained while performing attest, compilations,
financial advisory services or tax advisory services must be performed while
employed at a public accounting firm.
(3) Experience requirement. The applicant must develop experience that demonstrates to the satisfaction of the Board that the applicant has achieved each of the following competencies, together with the supervisory licensee verification.
(a) Understanding of the Code of Professional
Conduct promulgated and adopted by the Board;
(b) Ability to assess the achievement of a
client's objectives by demonstrating knowledge of various business
organizations, understanding of the objectives and goals of business entities,
ability to develop and analyze performance measures and critical success
factors, and understanding of the economic and regulatory trends that affect
the environment of a business entity.
(c) Experience in preparing working papers
that include sufficient relevant data to support the analysis and conclusions
required by the applicant's work.
(d) Understanding transaction streams and
information systems, including the ability to understand how individual
transactions aggregate at the organizational level, to infer how transactions
impact the organization as a whole, and to evaluate the integrity and
reliability of various client information systems, including relevant computer
aspects.
(e) Skills in risk
assessment and verification demonstrated by a sufficient understanding of
accounting and other information systems to;
(A) Assess the risk of misstatement in an
information system;
(B) Obtain
sufficient relevant data based on the risk of misstatement and the nature of
the engagement to determine the appropriateness of underlying data in terms of
its completeness, existence and occurrence, valuation and allocation, rights
and obligations, presentation and disclosures.
(f) Skills in decision making, problem
solving, critical analytical thinking, including the ability to evaluate and
interpret sufficient relevant data in a variety of engagements and
settings.
(g) Ability to express
scope of work, findings, and conclusions, including the ability to determine
when it is appropriate to issue reports on financial statements, system
reliability, or reports expressing scope of work, findings and
conclusions.
(4) Qualifying experience. An applicant must demonstrate to the satisfaction of the Board that the portfolio of experience submitted is of sufficient quality and diversity to meet the requirements of this rule. Qualifying experience may be obtained in the following categories:
(a)
Attest Experience that
demonstrates the competencies prescribed in section (3) of this rule must be
obtained while the applicant is:
(A) Employed
in public practice on the staff of a certified public accountant or a firm of
certified public accountants;
(B)
Employed in an organization where employment is equivalent to that described in
paragraph (4)(a)(A) of this rule if a peer review is conducted or if such
employment is with audit agencies, internal audit departments or other
organizations where a peer review is conducted and the audit agency, internal
audit department, or other organization is independent of the entity.
(C) Experience under this subsection must
include:
(i) Conducting attest-oriented
functions where third party reliance is an objective of the report;
(ii) Drafting reports in accordance with
professional standards;
(iii)
Drafting or evaluating the completeness and accuracy of financial statements
with footnotes in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles or
applicable reporting framework.
(D) "Third party reliance" as used in this
rule means:
(i) Actual third party reliance,
such as takes place with respect to the reader of financial statements upon
which an audit opinion has been rendered by a public accountant licensed in
Oregon or a certified public accountant;
(ii) Audits performed by government agencies,
including tax authorities, on organizations which are not subject to management
control by the auditing agency; or
(iii) Financial audits performed by
independent working groups where the purpose of the audit is reliance by the
board of directors on the fairness of the presentation of internally generated
financial statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting
principles or applicable reporting framework.
(E) Attest experience may be evaluated on a
case-by-case basis to ensure that experience meets the criteria of subsections
(3)(a) through (g).
(b)
Tax Experience that demonstrates the competencies prescribed in
section (3) of this rule must be obtained while the applicant is:
(A) Employed in public practice on the staff
of a public accountant, a certified public accountant or a firm of public
accountants or certified public accountants;
(B) Engaged in employment that is equivalent
to that described in paragraph (4)(b)(A) of this rule.
(C) Tax experience related to subsection
(3)(a) of this rule will include the practice of tax with integrity,
objectivity, independence, professional judgment, due professional care, and
professional skepticism.
(D) Tax
experience related to subsection (3)(b) of this rule will be in the context of
federal and state tax law, federal and state tax regulation, judicial
precedence and other technical tax sources applied to a variety of taxable and
nontaxable business entities, non-business entities, individuals, families,
estates and trusts.
(E) Tax
experience related to subsection (3)(c) of this rule will be in the context of
records that are clearly organized, complete, cross-referenced and with
adequate documentation and support for positions taken or proposed within the
context of federal and state tax law, federal and state tax regulations,
judicial precedence and other technical tax sources.
(F) Tax experience related to subsection
(3)(d) of this rule will be in the context of the application of tax law to
various types of transactions both individually and in the aggregate and both
actual and proposed.
(G) Tax
experience related to subsection (3)(e) of this rule will be in the context of
the evaluation of the reasonableness of data provided by clients and the
sufficiency and adequacy of the data to support reasonable tax positions and
conclusions.
(H) Tax experience
related to subsection (3)(f) of this rule will be in the context of identifying
tax issues, researching technical guidance, choosing appropriate courses of
action and proposing solutions.
(I)
Tax experience related to subsection (3)(g) of this rule will be in the context
of researching and preparing supporting documents for technical tax
positions.
(J) Tax experience may
be evaluated on a case-by-case basis to ensure that experience meets criteria
of subsections (3)(a) through (g).
(c)
Industry, government and
not-for-profit experience. Experience that demonstrates the competencies
described in section (3) of this rule may also be obtained while the applicant
is employed under the direct supervision of a public accountant or certified
public accountant as provided under this rule.
(A) Industry experience related to subsection
(3)(a) of this rule, will include the practice of accountancy with integrity,
objectivity, independence, professional judgment, due professional care and
professional skepticism.
(B)
Industry experience related to subsection (3)(b) of this rule, will be in the
context of assessing the objectives and goals, performance measures, critical
success factors and the economic and regulatory trends affecting the
applicant's company and industry.
(C) Industry experience related to subsection
(3)(c) will be in the context of documenting an analysis of a financial
accountancy issue affecting the applicant's company from the collection and
summarization of financial data to the identification of alternative
conclusions such that others of equal training and experience can trace
information to source data and draw similar conclusions.
(D) Industry experience related to subsection
(3)(d) of this rule will be in the context of understanding the entity's
transactions streams and information systems and evaluating the integrity and
reliability of the resultant information.
(E) Industry experience related to subsection
(3)(e) of this rule will be in the context of evaluating risks of misstated
financial data within the applicant's company and taking action to mitigate
those risks.
(F) Industry
experience related to subsection (3)(f) of this rule will be in the context of
identifying significant data trends and the impact of the trends on the
applicant's company on both a short and long term basis.
(G) Industry experience related to subsection
(3)(g) of this rule will be in the context of both written and oral
presentation of financial information and related accounting conventions within
the applicant's company that include the significance of the financial
information, applicable accounting rules and consideration of alternatives and
conclusions drawn.
(H) Industry,
government, and not-for-profit experience may be evaluated on a case-by-case
basis to ensure that experience meets criteria of subsections (3)(a) through
(g).
(d) Experience,
other than experience described in subsections (4)(a), (b), and (c) of this
rule will be evaluated by the Board on a case-by-case basis to ensure that
experience meets the criteria of subsections (3)(a) through (g).
(5) Submitting applications to the Board.
(a) An applicant's file
must be complete in every particular within three months of the date of
application or the file will be closed. The application fee is not
refundable.
(b) An applicant's file
may be included on the agenda of any meeting of the Board if the file is
complete in every particular no less than fourteen days prior to the date of a
scheduled Board meeting.
(6) If more than eight years have lapsed since an applicant completed and passed all sections of the CPA exam, an applicant may apply for a Certified Public Accountant license as follows:
(a) Submit a completed application
on a form provided for by the Board;
(b) Pay an initial application fee as
provided for in OAR 801-010-0010(1)(b);
(c) Complete and report 80 CPE hours which
must be completed within the 12 month period immediately preceding the date the
application for a restored permit is received at the Board office and which are
subject to the following:
(i) Credit for
programs in non-technical subjects is limited to 16 CPE hours; and
(ii) Submit proof of completion certificates
for each CPE course submitted; and
(iii) CPE hours used to qualify for initial
licensure under this section cannot be claimed on a renewal
application.
(d) Provide
proof of passing a Board approved ethics exam with a score of 90 percent or
higher within the 12 month period immediately preceding the date the
application for a restored permit is received at the Board office (any CPE
credit obtained in the course of completing the ethics exam can be applied to
the 80 hours of CPE in subsection (c) above); and
(e) Provide proof of completion of one year
of supervised public accountancy experience completed within three years
immediately preceding the date the application for initial licensure is
received at the board office. The one year of experience must comply with the
experience requirements as provided for in OAR
801-010-0065(2),(3),(4).
Statutory/Other Authority: ORS 670.310 & 673.410
Statutes/Other Implemented: ORS 673.040
Disclaimer: These regulations may not be the most recent version. Oregon may have more current or accurate information. We make no warranties or guarantees about the accuracy, completeness, or adequacy of the information contained on this site or the information linked to on the state site. Please check official sources.
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