For roughly three decades, becoming a CPA in the United States meant 150 college credit hours. A bachelor's degree is 120. That extra year of tuition, with no salary attached to it, is widely blamed for driving a generation of capable students into finance, consulting and tech instead.
That rule has now been dismantled across most of the country. More than 40 states and territories have adopted an alternative route, and the change is already in force in many of them. Yet most firms are planning their 2027 busy season from a hiring playbook written for the old rules.
What actually changed
The traditional path has not gone anywhere: 150 credit hours, one year of experience, and the CPA exam. What has been added alongside it is a second route, often called "bachelor's plus two": a bachelor's degree at the usual 120 credit hours, two years of professional experience, and the same exam. It was written into the ninth edition of the Uniform Accountancy Act in July 2025, and states have been adopting it ever since.
Ohio moved first in January 2025. By mid-2026, tracking by CFO Dive put the count past 40 states and territories. As of its July 2026 update, Michigan, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Wyoming and Florida had not yet formalised reforms, with Florida's bill stalled inside a wider deregulation fight.
Because this is still moving, treat any national count, including the one above, as a snapshot. Check your own state board before you build a hiring plan around it.
Why this lands on your 2027 busy season
Late October is when tax practices commit. Headcount is agreed, offers go out in November and December, and new people are at a desk in January. Decisions made in the next few weeks determine whether February is manageable or miserable.
The problem is that the pool you are hiring from in November 2026 is not the pool you hired from in November 2024, and the difference is not obvious from a CV. Somebody who looked ineligible eighteen months ago may now be on a clear path to licensure. Somebody you assumed was licensed may be mid-transition between two sets of rules.
Screening on "CPA or CPA-eligible" without knowing which pathway applies in your state is now a genuinely unreliable filter.
The effective-date trap
This is where firms are going to get caught, and it is worth understanding properly before you interview anyone.
States did not switch on the same day. Louisiana's change took effect in August 2026. Missouri's in late August. Alabama and Maryland on 1 October 2026. New York was reported as November 2026. Illinois is set for 1 January 2027, and Massachusetts was proposed for the same date.
Three consequences follow from that spread:
- A candidate's eligibility depends on where they will be licensed, not where they studied. Two people with identical transcripts can have completely different timelines depending on the state board involved.
- A role you are filling in January may sit in a state whose rules change mid-process. Illinois firms interviewing in November are hiring under one set of rules for a start date under another.
- Multi-state firms now have internal inconsistency. The same job title in two offices can carry two different licensure routes, which matters enormously for how you promise progression at offer stage.
None of this is unmanageable. It just cannot be handled by a job advert written in 2023.
More candidates, but not more finished ones
It would be easy to read all this as the shortage being solved. It is not, and assuming otherwise will cost you.
Removing the fifth year widens the entrance to the profession. It does nothing to the exit. The Controllers Council found that 61% of finance leaders reported minor or significant finance and accounting talent shortages, up from 46% the year before. Retirements continue regardless of what any state board decides. In Vermont, the state society reported about 1,200 CPAs in fiscal 2025 against a peak of roughly 1,400 in 2019, and that gap does not close because the credit requirement dropped.
There is also a timing reality nobody enjoys. A student who takes the new 120-hour route still needs two years of experience rather than one. The first meaningful wave of candidates licensed this way does not reach the market as finished seniors until the back end of the decade. For the 2027 busy season, the pool of genuinely experienced tax people is the same pool it was last year.
The bottleneck moved, and it is now yours
This is the part worth sitting with. The old barrier was educational, and universities absorbed it. The new barrier is two years of supervised professional experience, and employers absorb that.
Put plainly: under the new route, your firm is the qualification. That changes what a strong candidate is looking for. A graduate choosing between two offers is no longer weighing salary against salary. They are weighing which firm will actually get them licensed, and whether the supervision and sign-off will be there in year two when busy season is at its worst.
Firms that can describe that pathway concretely at interview will win candidates from firms that cannot, at the same salary. We are already seeing it in offers, and the firms losing out usually do not know why.
Our other three markets have not moved
If you hire across borders, it is worth being clear that this is a United States reform and nothing else has shifted with it.
In Canada, the CPA designation remains provincially regulated with its own education and practical experience requirements, and a US CPA does not transfer automatically despite the reciprocity arrangements. In the United Kingdom, ACA, ACCA and CTA pathways are unchanged, and the dominant constraint on hiring remains notice periods of three months and up at senior level. In Australia, CA ANZ and CPA Australia requirements are likewise untouched, and visa sponsorship still shapes the search more than any credential does.
A firm that reads the US headlines and assumes the barrier has dropped everywhere will build the wrong plan. If you are hiring tax or finance people in Canada, the United Kingdom or Australia, the old arithmetic still applies.
What to do in the next three weeks
- Confirm your state's position and effective date. Go to the state board, not a summary article, including this one. If you hire into more than one state, do it for each.
- Rewrite the eligibility line in your adverts. "CPA or CPA-eligible" now means different things to different readers. Say which pathways you accept and name the state.
- Write down your licensure support in plain terms. Supervision, study leave, exam fees, the realistic timeline. Put it in the interview, not the handbook. It is now a competitive weapon.
- Do not reduce your experienced hiring on the strength of the reform. It will not help you in January 2027. Treat it as a four-year pipeline change, not a busy-season fix.
- Move faster than your competitors on offers. Everything above is useless if the candidate accepts elsewhere while your approval sits in an inbox.
Where we come in
Most of the difficulty here is not finding tax professionals. It is knowing, before you interview, which pathway a given candidate is actually on, in which state, and what that means for when they can sign. Getting that wrong wastes a fortnight you do not have in November.
At Nevrica we work across tax and advisory recruitment, finance and accounting recruitment and senior leadership searches in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. Every candidate is verified against your actual requirements, credentials included, before you ever see their name.
If you are building a busy season team for 2027, tell us what you need and we will come back with a realistic timeline and a shortlist.
If you are a tax or finance professional weighing your next move, our current openings are worth a look, or send us your CV. It is free for candidates, always.
