Good news for all you 150 haters out there: Aspiring CPAs in the great state of Alaska now have the option to go for 120 units of education and two years of experience for licensure. Alaska joins handfuls of other states already with this law in place or on their way to making it official.
The Minnesota Society of CPAs (MNCPA) maintains a handy chart showing which states have changed pathway laws, are in the process of doing so, or are expected to soon, and already updated it to slap that pretty blue color on Alaska:
Sorry, AICPA, ya definitely lost this one.
HB 121 co-sponsor Calvin Schrage, an independent, told local KTUU that the bill which added an alternate path “originated in conversations with some of the business professionals in our community who recognize that there’s a growing national trend to simplifying some of the requirements to become a CPA in the United States, and that this would something that be that would be really beneficial to Alaskans.” We can only imagine how much more difficult it is to find a CPA in a state with so few of everything. We couldn’t easily find numbers on how many CPAs there are but we did learn that the Alaska Society of CPAs (AKCPA) has about 550 members and the entire state has a population of 740,133 as of 2024. You can do the math from there.
In addition to adding another pathway to CPA licensure, the bill allows Alaska businesses to use out-of-state CPAs for their official accounting business. We don’t care about that though.
On its way through Alaska’s legislative houses, the proposed licensing law received unanimous support in both. When it came time for the governor to sign it into law or veto it, which Schrage said they were worried about, Governor Mike Dunleavy did neither. No matter, it didn’t need his signature to become law.
The alternate pathway train keeps rolling on…
Can I get a refund from my college for the waste of Master’s I had to get for my CPA license?