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News Updates

Next Board Meeting

The Board of Accountancy will hold its next regular Board meeting Friday, October 18th, 2024 beginning at 9:00 a.m. as a hybrid meeting both in-person and through Microsoft Teams.

Date: Friday, October 18th, 2024

Time: 9:00 a.m.

Location:
Capital Event Center
6005 Tyee Drive SW
Tumwater, WA 98512

or

Microsoft Teams Meeting

Farewell Mike Paquette

Michael Paquette, Executive Director, CPA, submitted his letter of resignation to Governor Inslee. Mike has decided to go back to the finance world. Mike’s last day with the agency will be July 31, 2024.

We would like to express our appreciation of Mike’s service, leadership, and dedication to the profession, the Board, and the citizens of Washington State.

We wish Mike the best of luck in his new endeavor.

Notice of Special Meeting

The Washington State Board of Accountancy will hold a special meeting. The meeting is open to the public, but the only agenda item for Board discussion is a closed session for Board deliberation on a proposed Consent Agreement. The public is not permitted in the closed session. At the end of the closed session the agenda includes a public input session.

Date/Time:
Friday, March 8, 2024, at 2:00 p.m.

Location:
Microsoft Teams Meeting

CPA Exam Score Credit Relief Initiative

At the October 20, 2023, Board meeting the Board voted unanimously to adopt the CPA Exam Score Credit Relief Initiative proposed by NASBA. This initiative was formulated in response to the National Health Emergency and the hardship it placed on CPA Exam candidates. 

CPA-Inactive Legislation Passed

On March 17, 2022, Governor Inslee signed Senate Bill 5519 into law. The purpose of this legislation is to: 

  • Move the remaining CPA-Inactive Certificate holders to an inactive licensee status to remove the confusion surrounding the CPA-Inactive designation. 
  • Sync the Washington regulatory approach to CPA title use with that of most other US jurisdictions. 
  • Make the CPA-Inactive status available to all licensees. 

The changes take effect July 1, 2024.

What the changes mean to you if you hold a:

Peer Review Volunteer Position Opportunity

The Washington State Board of Accountancy (ACB) is looking for volunteers to serve on the Peer Review Oversight Committee (PROC). Members of this committee are not board members, but rather serve as voluntary PROC members.

Responsibilities include:

CPE Tracker

The Board has developed a feature that allows individuals to populate their CPE Tracker by uploading a pre-formatted CSV file of their CPE Summary rather than individually adding each CPE course.

For more information, please see our CPE Tracker instruction page.

New Executive Director

Governor Jay Inslee appointed Michael Paquette, CPA as the Executive Director of the Washington State Board of Accountancy effective September 16, 2022. 

Michael is a licensed CPA and has extensive experience with management. Since 2019, he has been the budget operations manager at the Washington State Health Care Authority, and prior to that was the assistant director for accounting and financial services at the Washington State Department of Transportation.

He will bring to the job an extensive knowledge of business practices as a CPA that are strategic to the Board.

Changes Coming to Peer Review Administration in Washington

For more than 25 years Julie Phipps has administered the Peer Review Program for Washington CPA firms on behalf of the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA). Julie plans to retire in May 2023, and the WSCPA has made the decision to outsource the administration of the Peer Review Program to the Colorado Society of CPAs (COCPA) starting May 1, 2023.