According to the Puget Sound Business Journal, the Washington State Board of Accountancy issued a record 2,086 new CPA licenses in 2025, up 16.3% from prior year.
But, and you knew from the headline there would be a but, more than 60 percent of those licenses went to international candidates.
While international CPA exam candidates could always travel to the United States to sit for the exam if qualified in a state that allowed non-residents to do so, proper international CPA exam testing is a relatively new phenomenon. True international testing that did not require candidates to visit the US launched in 2011 and as of today, qualified candidates can sit in the following countries:
- Bahrain
- Bermuda
- Brazil
- Egypt
- England
- Germany
- India
- Ireland
- Israel
- Japan
- Jordan
- Kuwait
- Lebanon
- Nepal
- Philippines
- Republic of Korea
- Saudi Arabia
- Scotland
- United Arab Emirates
Guess TPTB figured out that accountant shortage problem eh?
Wait, is this saying that 60% of the candidates that took their CPA exams in WA, were international candidates?
Or that 60% of the CPAs minted in the great state of WA were for international candidates taking the CPA outside of the US?
The latter is concerning, the former is concerning but not to the extent of the latter.
https://x.com/PSBJ/status/2024299218194604174
“The Washington State Board of Accountancy issued its most licenses ever in 2025. Only a quarter of the new licensees, however, lived in Washington.”
Wtf is TBTB
TPTB = The Powers That Be aka the people who have the most influence and make the decisions.
Boomers in this “profession”, looking at you big Four and mid-tier firms, and their crony politicians are destroying the CPA profession. Globalization has been and will always be a negative factor for Americans. Everything under the sun will or is in process of getting outsourced. Where is all the protests and anger from the AICPA over this?!?
[Editor note: I had to remove your last sentence, sorry. Message me if you want to brainstorm a way to say what you wanted to say that won’t get us nasty emails from the AICPA and/or their lawyers about it. I hear you though! ~Adrienne]
“Where is all the protests and anger from the AICPA over this?!?”
Why do you think the AICPA went global? They are getting dues money from all over the world, so they don’t care where their members live.
Remember, they are now the Association of International… no longer the American Institute
Internationally, having your CPA can be a huge career boost within your own company, and it doesn’t necessarily mean competition with U.S. CPAs – this is partly because the profession has historically done a great job of promoting its values and maintaining a strong reputation. WA has historically had positive business ties overseas, plus their changing CPA eligibility rules make it easier for work-experienced candidates to apply with just a 4-year degree; thus, part of this is the natural combination of those two (it could be any other state with the same factors). Even if not true in every case, this appears to be more a symptom than the problem. U.S. CPA counts are shrinking, no? The work’s gotta get done somehow – the SEC and IRS ain’t gonna wait. With tech expanding the geographic pool of service providers, the ol’ supply/demand curve marches on. Maybe U.S. firms should take a hard look internally as to why their local workforce is shrinking due to a decrease in market entrants and what they can tangibly do about it (i.e. challenge longstanding norms, and *gasp* perhaps put less money in the owners’ pockets just because they suffered through a crappy business model and deserve to be paid to keep it going).
Why can’t we just pay CPA’s more??? Like u gotta increase to at least 6 figures if you want people to go through the hard process of getting the job. I was considering CPA but was hesitant because they get paid as much as a mcdonalds manager and work longer hours
Putting $$ in the owners pockets is all the large firms care about. They could have taken action to address the accountant shortage years ago. We can wonder about whether the shortage was created purposefully or not but offshoring work absolutely benefits large firm owners financially.
“Should We Be Concerned?” No.
Washington is one of the few states that does require residency or a social security number to get your CPA license. A little context goes a long way…
This is beyond shameful, and grassroots CPAs need to demand action from the fat cats at the AICPA. The townhalls have turned into nothing more than a circle jerk of all that is wrong with this profession…
This is disheartening. I am studying for my CPA and there’s already so much competition from offshoring. It makes you really wonder if its worth it if they’re just going to give the job to someone who will work for half the pay.
Having a defeatist attitude and blaming offshoring might be popular among the associates happy hour events but it will not help your career. It blows my mind how so many on this site are afraid of competition.