664,532 Actively Licensed U.S. CPAs

State Board Report

June 2016

The NASBA Accountancy Licensee Database (ALD) as of April 22, 2016 contained information on 664,532 actively licensed U.S. CPAs. The ALD now houses about 98 percent of the U.S. CPA licensee information, aggregating information from 51 of the 56 jurisdictions. The database has a public-facing version, CPAverify.org, which is available free of charge that enables anyone to verify if a person or firm is licensed to practice public accounting and if they have any enforcement history on record.

NASBA Chief Legal Officer and Director of Compliance Services Maria L. Caldwell reported the ALD is one of the most accelerated data-sharing programs for state-regulated professions: "Without the ongoing efforts of the State Boards and their willingness to collaborate and preserve the CPA designation, there would not be the unprecedented degree of data that is currently shared among State Boards."

NASBA’s total count of active CPAs was picked up by the Wall Street Journal on June 7, and published on the same page they reported 177,758 candidates took the CFA Institute’s examination last year for the Chartered Financial Analyst. In comparison, there were 93,693 candidates who took the Uniform CPA Examination in 2015.