We got a request to start a thread on the CPA exam results being totally MIA. The last thread seemed to indicate that results were slow to come out but here we are a month later and some of you took your exam(s) back in July.
So what the hell, NASBA? People can’t sleep at night. Get with the program!
Discuss your anxiety in the comments or if you’ve got your scores, just tell us you got between 75 and 79. Anything higher and you might has well be one of those Elijah Watts rocket-scientists.
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So Your Firm Is Going to Pay For You to Take the CPA Exam: Four Things To Remember
Have a question on the CPA Exam? What section is easiest? How should I study for Regulation? Are pants mandatory at the testing site? Shoot us an email with your query.
Not only do you have a job (congrats!) but you have a job that is willing to pay for you to take the CPA exam. Awesome! But before you load up on review materials, be sure you know what your employer expects and understand that there are situations where you can be held liable for materials if you don’t live up to your employer’s expectations.
This is Business – First of all, though you can’t claim a deduction, reimbursement of your CPA exam expenses (education, exam fees, etc) is treated as a business expense, just like any other training. If you’re desperate to get someone to help out with review course or exam fees, try selling this point to your employer.
Make the Most of Time You Have Now – If you’re in the Big 4 or anywhere down to the middle, chances are your review course fees are covered and your performance on the exam might be rewarded with a bonus. Don’t blow this! It’s easier for you to study and pass exams before you are loaded down with responsibilities and managers are much more lenient with first years looking for time off than they are if you’re in your 4th consecutive year of failing FAR. Take this seriously and realize that your firm will probably only pay once; blow it and you’re going to have to come up with retake fees on your own.
This Isn’t 2006 – Several years ago, firms would happily pay $3,000 and up for overpriced review courses with all the bells and whistles but since belts have been tightened, some are reluctant to cough up a chunk of cash without a guaranteed return on their investment. Look at this subsidy not as a gift but as additional income. Would you blow $3,000 of your own income on something and then never use it?
Ask Your Firms Lots of Questions – If your firm does not already have an agreement with a review course but is willing to pay your fees, ask lots of questions upfront and find out if you can invoice for repeats or supplemental products if you need them. One of the larger firms has a “we’ll pay for anything once” rule meaning they will only cut one check, regardless of whether it’s for $2 or $2,000. Other firms have strict rules about what you can order and when you can start (think government agencies). Regardless of how your firm works, ask about what is covered and what is expected in return.
In this economy, you can’t afford to blow a free review course and discounted or all-expense-paid trips to Prometric.
Adrienne Gonzalez is the founder of Jr. Deputy Accountant, a former CPA wrangler and a Going Concern contributor . You can see more of her posts here and all posts on the CPA Exam here.
CPA Exam Candidate’s Study Break Results in Caption Ingenuity
As many of you are painfully aware, accountants aren’t generally known for their sense of humor. DUIs? Maybe. Organizational skills? Definitely. Freakish ability to memorize a dictionary’s worth of FASB ASCs? Sadly, yes.
But every now and then, the world is blessed with an accountant who smashes the mold.
Case in point, 24-year-old David Woodbridge. A native of Lake Forest, IL, Woodbridge just won the New Yorker’s caption contest for his chortle-worthy caption which appeared in the magazine’s October 10th issue. Odds of winning the contest are estimated at 1 in 10,000 due to the large number of submissions, according to the magazine’s cartoon editor. Anyone care to take a guess on the odds that an accountant could win the contest?
The best part of the story? He came up with the winning entry while taking a break from studying for the CPA exam:
Woodbridge said he first tried the contest about three years ago but gave up after not winning after several attempts. Upon graduating from college, he decided to try the weekly contest again this summer while studying for the CPA exam.
Now I know what you’re asking… what was this hilarious caption?
Woodbridge’s winning caption was “Looks like they’re making cuts at the top” to a drawing of two janitors standing in the lobby of a building with headless corporate executives entering the building around them. He beat out “I dare anyone to say we missed a spot” and “It seems a bit extreme, but it does keep the zombies away” to win an original drawing of his captioned cartoon (valued at $250).
Uhhh… congrats?
Can You Tattoo a CPA Exam Cheat Sheet On Your Arm?
Listen, this may seem like a ridiculous question and knowing our tax-obsessed friend Joe Kristan, chances are he was kidding when he asked it but I couldn’t help but indulge him since this is actually one I have thought about more than once.
Being pretty well-covered from head to toe in ink myself, if it were allowed (and were I completely bankrupt of ethical fortitude), tattoos #34 – 47 co be mnemonic cheat sheets. But is it allowed?
Joe asks not so subtly via Twitter:
@adrigonzo Can you tatoo [sic] cheat sheets on your arms? If so, what parts do you recommend?
Valid question (if ridiculous), no? Let’s look at the rules.
You cannot bring paper, pencil, notes, your cell phone, a calculator watch (who even USES one of those?!), or even a hat into Prometric and if you choose to bring a jacket (I hear those rooms get chilly), you’ve got to wear it all 3 – 4 hours of the exam or else risk running out of time to take a break and put it in your locker. But as far as I can tell, there is absolutely no requirement that would otherwise bar someone from writing down the “answers” in fancy script on the absorbent epidermis of their inner forearms. After all, it’s not like you can remove your skin, right?
Here’s the problem (or four):
The first is that the AICPA Board of Examiners guard their proprietary CPA exam questions with their lives. If it came down to someone being able to bypass the rules by slipping past Prometric with answers tattooed on them, chances are they’d not only skin the offender but sue the shit out of them to find out where they got those answers. Review courses may have practice questions that are similar to actual exam content and the AICPA may retire 50 questions from each section a year but NO ONE except for the AICPA Board of Examiners has an actual answer key.
That being said, if by some fluke someone were able to get their hands on real exam content (unlikely since you aren’t allowed to take scratch paper out of the room and trust me, every sheet is accounted for), the CPA exam that you get is actually pulled from a test bank of thousands if not tens or hundreds of thousands of questions. So even if you illegally smuggle out exam content and hand it to a tattoo artist, the odds that you would get the same questions on an exam are slim to none. Sure there are likely repeats (as anyone who has taken an exam section two or – God forbid – three or more times can tell you) but not so many that getting an entire random exam tattooed on you would do you any good.
So, let’s just say somehow someone gets their hands on an exact exam and somehow someone else just so happens to get that same exact exam (after tattooing the answers on their forearm). Exam content, as many of you should already know, changes twice a year. So even if the first two somehow work out, the tattoo will be obsolete in 6 months. Then what? Scrawl FAS 141(r) underneath the other rules like a cover-up? Tacky!
Lastly, let’s all keep in mind here that this is the CPA exam, a professional licensure examination that tests not only your knowledge but your personal ethics and ability to protect the public interest. Times may be changing and the public may be OK with being served by a CPA with a visible butterfly tattooed on their ankle (or, we can only hope one day, a full sleeve tattoo) but there is no way you are protecting the public if you’re starting off your career looking for ways to cheat the system.
So is it allowed? Technically yes from what I can gather. Morally that’s a big fat hell no and I shouldn’t have to explain why. We look forward to an announcement from the AICPA that all candidate tattoos must be biometrically logged before admission to the exam is granted.