Practicing Public Accounting in the United States of America, Part I (article in Revue Française de Comptabilité, November 2013)
La Revue Française de Comptabilité (RFC) is an internationally recognized, technical-refereed publication of the French national accounting organization Conseil Supérieur de l‘Ordre des Experts-comptables. It is a monthly published for accounting practitioners, educators and students and other financial professionals. The RFC covers a broad range of topics including management, accounting, taxation, business law, labor law. Technology.
In the November 2013 issue of the RFC, Mathieu Aimlon discussed, in the first part of his two-part article, practicing public accounting in the United States of America. This is an exciting topic because the United States is a major economy and because of the U.S. accounting profession leadership role in the international arena. The following is a published excerpt of Mathieu’s article.
In the July/August 2013 issue of the Revue Française de Comptabilité, we shared insights on the United States’ Certified Public Accountant (CPA) licensure and the benefits of being a licensed CPA. There are more 700,000 professionals who earned the United States’ CPA credential around the globe. As licensed professionals, they have, among other career options, the opportunity to practice public.
With more than 47,000 public accounting firms, the US public accountancy profession is one of the largest in the world. It is structured around the 55 State boards of accountancy that regulate the profession, the National association of state boards of accountancy, the American institute of certified public accountants, and the Public company accounting oversight board. CPAs in public practice may provide any services with audit being the only service for which a CPA license is required. To ensure compliance to professional standards, attest services are subject to quality control review. The reader may find it interesting to compare those to the practice of public accounting in Europe and, especially, in France.
