Accountancy boards target reciprocity at annual meeting.

Responding to the reciprocity concerns raised by the joint AICPA/NASBA committee on regulatory structure, the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy launched an initiative to help make the CPA license more transportable across state lines. NASBA's leaders urged the more than 250 attendees at the association's 89th annual meeting to look at the credentials of CPAs seeking reciprocal licenses with an eye to substantial equivalence. Even when there may be significant differences between states' requirements, if an individual licensee meets the requirements set out in the Uniform Accountancy Act (UAA), he or she should find it relatively easy to obtain a reciprocal license under a new rule being proposed for adoption by the state boards.

The state boards were asked to adopt the following rule, which had been approved in principle by the NASBA board of directors: "For purposes of reciprocity, an applicant having a valid unrevoked license to practice as a certified public accountant from any jurisdiction and who has obtained from NASBA verification of compliance with the Uniform Accountancy Act's CPA registration requirements shall be presumed to have qualifications substantially equivalent to this state's."

NASBA UAA committee chairman Gerald Burns encouraged meeting attendees to win support for the concept from their state boards, check with their legal counsel to see how it could be implemented and then adopt the rule. Members of his committee will meet with individual state boards to discuss how the rule can be put into practice. Burns explained the idea was to develop a "seamless approach" to reciprocity--to allow the …