The Florida Board of Accountancy made new rules changes that impact the education requirements for Florida accounting students. These new changes are effective as of February 13, 2018. The following is a brief summary of the changes:

• Business law course is no longer required to include specific course curriculum that includes contracts, torts and Uniform Commercial Code. You need 3 semester hour/ 4 quarter hours of business law.
• Accounting Information Systems is no longer a requirement for your accounting courses.
• The requirement for upper division accounting has been reduced from 36 to 30 hours of accounting hours to be licensed (including Taxation, Auditing, Financial and Cost)
• The requirement of upper division general business has been reduced from 39 hours to 36 hours (Including 3 hours of business law).

This new ruling will not affect the 150 semester hour/ 200 quarter hour total for licensure or the 120 semester hour/ 160 quarter hour minimum needed to sit for the CPA exam.

Students who have previously applied for the exam and these new requirements affect them, they should send an email with their application number to cpa.applications@myfloridalicense.com. For more detail on this Rule 61H1-27.002, you can go to the Certified Public Accounting Education Requirements section on the DBPR.

If you have any other questions, you may contact the FICPA Emerging Professionals Managers, Jennifer Allen and Sara Schmedinghoff, at emergpro@ficpa.org or at (850) 224-2727.