Mississippi - Become a CPA

Becoming a CPA in Mississippi requires not only passing the Uniform CPA Exam, but going through at least one year of practical accounting experience prior to licensure. It also requires evidence of possessing good moral character.

Education Requirements

In Mississippi, those who have earned a bachelor’s degree and received at least 120 semester hours of college credit may apply to take the Uniform CPA Exam. The educational hours were lowered from 150 to 120 as of July, 2016. Those hours must include a minimum of 48 semester hours in either upper division or graduate level accounting and business-related courses. Accounting courses per se must account for at least 24 of the 48 hours and must include a minimum of three semester hours in:

• • Auditing

  • Financial Accounting

  • Government/Not-for-Profit Accounting

  • Management/Cost Accounting

  • Taxation

Educational institutions and classes must be recognized by the Mississippi State Board of Public Accountancy (MSBPA).

1. Residency requirement

Mississippi has a residency requirement for potential CPAs. The person must either live in the state or have a place of business in Mississippi in order to take the Uniform CPA Exam and receive a license as a Mississippi CPA.

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How to Sit for the CPA Exam in Mississippi

If you have acquired the necessary number of semester hours and have received a bachelor’s degree, you may arrange to take the CPA exam. In Mississippi, the Uniform CPA Exam is conducted in either Jackson or Tupelo. You must fill out the MSBPA’s Application for the CPA Examination. When sending in your application, include a 2’ by 2” photo of yourself, a copy of your current driver’s license and proof of state residency. Such proof includes:

• • Voter registration card

  • Mississippi state resident income tax return

  • Vehicle tags or registration

  • Proof of payment of Mississippi real estate taxes

  • Copy of Mississippi homestead rebate qualification

  • Transcript of graduation from a Mississippi college or university

Your college or university should send your transcript directly to the MSBPA, at 5 Old River Place, Suite 104, Jackson, MS 39202-3449. You must also send all application fees to this address.

Once you have sent in all the necessary documentation and fees, you should receive a Notice to Schedule (NTS) from the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA). The NTS arrives via the way you indicated, either by email, fax or regular mail. Visit the Prometric website to schedule your test or call the Candidate Services Call Center toll-free at 800-580-9648. Appear at the test site one hour before your scheduled exam time. Your test scores will arrive in the mail.

Experience Needed

After passing the exam, CPA candidates must spend at least one year of full-time accounting experience under the supervision of a licensed CPA. The equivalent of one year of full-time work, such as two years of half-time work, is acceptable. The experience is either paid or voluntary. Only those who have undergone this experience within the prior five years may apply for a licensure application. The experience must include the following:

• • Preparing tax returns

  • Providing tax advice

  • Financial advisory services

  • Consulting

  • Management advisory services

  • Issuing financial statement reports

How to Get Your License

Once you have passed the Uniform CPA Exam and have the necessary experience under your belt, you may apply for licensure as a Mississippi CPA. You have three years from the initial passing of the CPA exam until applying for licensure. Begin by filling out the Application for CPA License. The application requires notarization. Along with the application, include in your packet all necessary fees, a 2” x 2” photo of yourself, your proof of residency and all your previous accounting employment. You must fill out and include a Request for Employment Verification for each of your supervisors. The completed package is mailed to the MSBPA.

First-time and reinstatement applications for CPAs includes a background check to assure the applicant is of “good moral character.”

1. Reciprocal CPA licenses

If you are licensed in another state with qualifications equivalent to those in Mississippi, it is possible to receive a reciprocal CPA license if you have spent four out of last 10 years practicing public accounting as a licensed CPA. Currently, the certifications and licenses of all U.S. states and territories with the exception of the Virgin Islands is considered equivalent to Mississippi. Complete the Application for Reciprocal CPA License and send it the board of the state in which your license is held. The application is returned to you once the state licensing board fills out the appropriate sections, and you must then have the document notarized in Mississippi. You must also fill out the Request for Employment Verification for every previous supervisor over the past decade and send them with the application. Complete the Authorization for Interstate Exchange of Examination and Licensure Information to the Board in the state in which you hold your CPA license or where you passed the Uniform CPA Exam. Send the completed paperwork and applicable fees to the MSBPA.

Continuing Professional Education Requirements

CPAs licensed in Mississippi must complete 40 hours of continuing professional education (CPE) annually. Newly licensed CPAs are exempt from the requirement for the first year after receiving their license. CPAs may carry over up to 20 CPE hours from one year to the next.

Of those 40 CPE hours, at least eight (20 percent) must involve accounting and auditing. Four of the hours must be in Ethics, Professional Conduct and Public Accountancy Laws and Regulations. Report your annual hours on the Continuing Professional Education Reporting Form, even if your hours did not reach the required minimum. In fact, you must report CPE hours even if the annual total is zero.

1. Approved CPE formats

Approved CPE hours are available in various formats. These include:

• • University and college credit courses – one semester hour equals 15 CPE credits

  • University and college non-credit courses – one semester hour equals one CPE credit

  • Formal self-study programs approved by NASBA’s Quality Assurance Services

  • Organized, formal in-house training programs

  • Service as an instructor, discussion leader or lecturer

  • Publishing books or articles contributing to CPA professional competence

  • For CPAs who are also licensed and practicing attorneys, continuing legal education counts toward CPE credit.

Please note that personal development programs and independent study that requires only reading do not qualify as approved CPE formats.

2. CPE record keeping

Keep a record of your CPE hours for at least five years. The information should include the location of the course and the organization sponsoring it, along with the attendance dates, name of instructors and their qualifications, the number of hours per category, the title and description of the courses and the number of CPE hours you’ve claimed.

3. CPA retirement or disability

Those CPAs who are at least 55 years old may file for a retired status at the time of their annual renewal. Such individuals must fill out the appropriate forms and can no longer practice as CPAs but may use the title “CPA retired.” A CPA who has become permanently disabled may apply for permanent disability status at the time of license renewal. The licensee’s physician must provide a written statement indicating the licensee is no longer able to perform the activities required of a CPA by the MSBPA and must detail the disability.

All CPAs require to end up being a CPA, since they are thought about individuals that do accounting. So they need to know all of the different credentials to end up being a CPA. But you can additionally start out with your CPA education as well as some functional skills if you have some interest in accounting as well as intend to come to be a CPA.

As mentioned previously, among the demands for accountants is that they should have a bachelor's level from a certified university or college. This degree will allow you to go on to end up being a Certified Public Accountant (CPA).

Another demand for accountants is that they have experience in analyzing monetary declarations. You will not need to know with financial statements to become a CPA. Nevertheless, you will need to be extremely well learnt financial statement analysis, to ensure that you can do a great job when bookkeeping other individuals's financial statements.

Some other methods to become a CPA include accounting for a church or other not-for-profit company. Even if they do not pay you for the time you spend doing their accounting, you will certainly still require to be accredited by their accounting department.

Sometimes you will be asked to investigate someone's economic records. This is really exciting for numerous accountants, but it is additionally demanding work. It needs tremendous skills, commitment, perseverance, and also resolution.

One of the most fundamental parts of becoming a CPA is finding out how to effectively prepare a statement of accounting problems. That means preparing and finishing every one of the needed files and also items that are needed to offer the details that a CPA requires to do his job. It indicates completing your accounting workbooks, performing a great documents search, filing the proper documentation, giving the details asked for by the customer, as well as nearly everything else that is needed to submit a precise economic statement.

There are several methods to learn how to come to be a CPA. There are additionally lots of methods for attaining these credentials. Some of the a lot more prominent approaches consist of:

When you graduate from an accredited college or college, you will certainly need to take an exam to be able to reveal that you meet the requirements for accountants. In order to pass the exam, you will need to do 2 things:

If you decide to go the standard route of going to an institution to discover how to end up being a CPA, after that you will be required to take the CLEP tests. These CLEP examinations are similar to the final tests for the MBA program in many areas.

Some CPA colleges supply degrees in company management and after that offer you a selection of which 2 subjects you wish to examine to come to be a CPA. This makes it simple to choose training courses, as they will cover the very same topics as the other major business disciplines.

In order to be a CPA, you will certainly need to pass an exam to prove that you are knowledgeable about all of the subjects that are called for to learn how to become a certified public accountant. For a lot of graduates of accounting programs, this exam is made to ensure that they might take it anywhere in the globe.

Courses on just how to end up being a CPA are readily available online. Figure out if your institution has courses on this subject.

Trainees picking to comply with the archival training course will definitely concentrate on business economics along with financing while those on the behavior track will concentrate on psychological principles. Practical application of principles Financial along with managerial audit are both main areas of research study within PhD programs and additionally students will select to analyze one of these areas comprehensively.

With countless different occupations supplied to grads of accounting programs, trainees usually pick to concentrate their understanding on a certain location, such as bookkeeping, taxes and also forensic audit. The checklist below will definitely use potential trainees as a beginning variable for thinking of places of particular enthusiasm within the location of accounting.

Auditing The world of auditing is an impressive as well as also different branch of book-keeping that enables those that focus on it to collaborate with several various sorts of tasks. Running as a screen of organisation integrity and concepts, accounting wants seeing to it business are held to monetary needs. Particular topics students can expect to concentrate on include company law, accounting research study strategies, as well as likewise forensic accounting.

Generally holds a CPA authorization; produces techniques to take care of financial records astutely, as well as likewise make certain finest approaches are used when preparing tax commitment documents. Personal Accountant Uses individuals by preparing yearly tax obligation papers; can operate at an accounting company or as an independent accounting specialist. Provides financial pointers as well as reporting help as well as is required to have a Cpa permit.