POTENTIAL ELIMINATION OF SLG FROM THE CPA EXAM: INPUT NEEDED
Section: Around the Nation




The AICPA recently issued an exposure draft and invitation to comment on Maintaining the Relevance of the Uniform CPA Examination®.
 
There are important issues related to state and local government accounting addressed in this report. We believe the issue of greatest concern is a proposal in the invitation to comment section of the document to eliminate state and local government accounting from the CPA exam.
 
You may wish to read the Executive Summary on pages 5 and 6 of the document and the Request for Comment on pages 7 and 8, with attention given to page 8, section B.b., which introduces the proposal to eliminate SLG accounting from the CPA Exam. The specific invitation to comment information related to eliminating SLG accounting is located on page 36 of the document.  
 
There are also proposals in the ED to reduce the depth of governmental accounting tested on the CPA exam. The SLG accounting topics are listed in the Blueprint as FAR Section IV, changes 37-39, on pages 25 and 26.
 
There are many other changes proposed for FAR, REG, AUD and BEC in the ED. You may want to review the full document for other topics of interest to you. There is also a second proposal in the invitation to comment to eliminate the Written Communication portion of BEC.
 
If we receive enough feedback, NASACT will prepare a response letter to the ED and a separate response to the ITC. In order to meet the AICPA’s deadline of April 30, 2020, please send your comments to Kim O’Ryan no later than Friday, April 3. You don’t need to respond to all the topics and questions in the document, you can respond only to the ones of interest to you.