Arkansas CPA CPE Requirements: How Many Hours, By When
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- OR 40 hours within any single 12-month period, as a full ALTERNATIVE to the 120-hour/3-year track above -- your choice between the two, not a floor added on top of either.
- 4 ethics hours, within that same total.
CPE hours are prorated in a licensee's first calendar year of licensure, and new licensees are exempt from the ethics requirement until their first full calendar year of licensure. Confirm with the Board which applies to you.
Arkansas offers licensees a CHOICE of two equivalent tracks (17 CAR § 236-1203(a), formerly Rule 13.2(a)): 120 hours within the 36 months immediately preceding Jan 1 of the renewal year, OR 40 hours within the 12 months immediately preceding that date. At least 4 hours of CPE in accounting professional conduct/ethics are required every 36 months, and 1 of those 4 hours must specifically be an Arkansas State Board-specific laws-and-rules course (satisfiable via the Board's own free web-based course) -- that 1 hour counts toward, not in addition to, the 4-hour ethics total. New licensees are exempt from the ethics requirement until their first full calendar year of licensure, and CPE hours in the first calendar year of licensure are prorated. Interpretation trap: no more than 80% of total hours may come from self-study/independent-study/authorship combined (17 CAR § 236-1204(f), formerly Board Rule 13.3(f)) -- a detail several vendor summaries omit.
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