Get your CPE for free

Continuing professional education wasn’t required for accountants until the 1970s. It was predicted this might be a problem for very bright or very advanced CPAs. Would there be sufficient stimulating programs for them? Today there is an endless variety of excellent CPE, for the beginner and the most advanced CPA, available online for free.

I decided in 2015 to see whether I could fulfill all my CPE requirements without incurring any cost from the many free offerings online. Amazingly, I haven’t had to spend a dollar on my 80-hour biennial CPE requirement since, and the course selection and quality has been far superior and interesting than most offerings I could obtain for a fee.

A brief history

Early in the accounting profession, there existed few continuing education programs. Formal programs were adopted by the larger CPA firms in the late 1940s and 1950s, generally directed at training new staff in the actual practice of public accounting. The American Institute of CPAs started a new professional development division in 1959 with the goal of promoting staff training and continuing education, coordinating with state societies for wide distribution.

Through the 1960s, CPE was voluntary. Beginning in 1967, the profession began to call for mandatory continuing education. It was felt that the public should expect a CPA to remain continually aware of the latest developments, beyond a one-time passing of the CPA exam. In response to accounting failures, continuing education became a requirement for retaining CPA certification, in the belief that it would reduce infractions and scandals caused by ignorance.

In the spring of 1969, Iowa became the first state to require CPE: 15 days triennially. In the spring of 1981, the AICPA Council resolved that states be urged to make CPE a condition for CPA license renewal. Over the next two decades, all states adopted CPE requirements, preceded with rapid adoption by AICPA and state societies as requirements for membership.

The Internal Revenue Service requires 72 hours of continuing education triennially for Enrolled Agents to maintain their active license, and the National Association of Enrolled Agents requires 30 hours annually of IRS-approved CE as a condition of membership.

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Many CPAs consider CPE drudgery. Pre-class readings or preparation materials are not required because very few attendees would comply. After attending a full-day seminar of five or more sessions, many CPAs would be challenged just to name the titles of all the classes they attended. Mail-order courses consist of answering multiple choice trivia questions where efficiency requires not reading the text, but working from the questions to find the answers in the text.

Major purveyors of free CPE

Here are some of the best sources of no-cost continuing education for accountants that I have found.

• CPAacademy.org: The widest variety of good, great, and mediocre CPE. You can earn eight hours of free CPE every single weekday. Some presenters are familiar names, like Edward Mendlowitz, even Sidney Kess, and you may become followers of other great presenters. The platform also hosts many IRS National Forum presentations. During the 2020 Covid lockdown, the NYU Tax Institute was presented for free. At the start, all courses were free, though today there are a few that charge a nominal fee. Just beware, a few courses are infomercials, not unlike some paid CPE many of us have occasionally encountered at state society seminars.
• Deloitte Dbriefs, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PwC: The Big Four are a great place keeping up with the latest accounting and Securities and Exchange Commission pronouncements every quarter, and learning some very advanced accounting and tax principles. You can earn all your A&A credit here. Many unique presentations will appeal to CPAs in industry, and many are archived so one can obtain CPE months after the live presentation. Top firm partners and managers give these presentations on advanced topics that cannot be found anywhere else.
• BDO, Baker Tilly, CohnReznick, CLA, Crowe, Forvis, Grant Thornton, Moss Adams, Riveron and UHY: The next tier of national CPA firms also offer great CPE for live webinars, but usually no credit for archived seminars. These are great offerings, with very practical applications. Many firms’ CPE offerings can be found in an online calendar, www.freelivecpe.com/events.
• IRS.gov: Search on irs.gov for “Webinars for Tax Practitioners” and “Webinars for Small Businesses” for a list of upcoming IRS CPE live sessions.
• The AICPA: Occasionally, the AICPA will offer free CPE.
• The NAEA: The NAEA offers free CE to members.
• State societies: State CPA societies occasionally offer free CPE. (For instance, the New York State Society of CPAs offers members unlimited free CPE from a 200 course library.)
• Software vendors and services providers. Many of these offer CPE through courses or webinars. Payroll providers ADP and Paychex, and software vendors like Intuit are good examples, while Wolters Kluwer’s CCH CPE Link will gain you access for up to five free CPE credits from CCH, and free access to a wide variety of professional accountant publications from Wolters Kluwer.
• Illumeo: A discount paid CPE seller that offers some free CPE courses.
• AccountingToday.com: Hosts a wide variety of webinars sponsored by respected vendors that qualify for free CPE, as well as monthly editorial-driven webinars that also qualify. 

Ethics CPE

Fulfilling ethics CPE requirements without cost can be challenging, and in some states, it can be impossible because of state-specific course requirements.

Only Georgia, North Dakota, and South Dakota have no ethics CPE requirement. All the other states and territories require ethics CPE. Like general CPE, these requirements were introduced in response to accounting failures.

Ethics CPE requirements vary widely. Most states require four hours biennially, while some require only two hours biennially. Others require one or two hours annually. Many have state-specific CPE requirements, often a review of the particular state’s public accountancy law and regulations, or simply regulate those specific ethics courses that qualify.

A brief listing of each state’s ethics CPE requirement is available at https://jncpe.com/state-ethics-cpe-requirements. Be sure to check with your state for complete information.

In the above list of free CPE offerings, CCH CPE Link offers free ethics courses. Many are state-specific. The IRS occasionally offers courses on Circular 230 or due diligence, which may qualify for ethics CPE in many states. Buried in its website, Illumeo offers free online ethics CPE. Most CPAacademy.org ethics offerings are not free, though occasionally, a free course, like “Ethical & Penalty Standards in Tax Practice” appears. 

Summary

Free CPE offerings have proven better tailored to my interests than paid offerings. Course instructors are usually top quality. I am quite impressed at the hard-to-find, highly specialized and technical instruction available at no cost. The downside is that I have close to 80 pages of one-hour CPE certificates for every biennial cycle.

State boards of accountancy have final authority on the acceptance of individual courses for CPE credit. Look for the “NASBA Approved” logo on course offerings, which is accepted by most state boards of accountancy.

While it began as a lark, “free” has become my only method for completing CPE requirements. The cost savings was never my reason, because I consider paid CPE quite affordable. Rather, the quality and variety of free CPE offerings exceed paid offerings for my needs, and is highly recommended.