Texas CPA CPE requirements
After earning your CPA license, your work isn’t done. You need to maintain your license by regularly renewing it and meeting the state’s requirements related to continuing professional education (CPE). To help you keep your CPA license, we’re sharing the Texas CPE requirements plus some tips and resources to help you meet them more easily.
Texas CPE requirements
CPAs in Texas must complete 120 credits during a rolling three-year period with a minimum of 20 credits each year. This means you can’t finish all 120 credits into one year—you have to space them out a bit. Texas CPA CPE requirements also include the following:
- Ethics: All Texas CPAs must complete a 4-hour ethics course every two years.
- Nanocourses: These short (usually around 10 minutes) courses can only account for 50% of your requirements, or 60 hours over the three-year rolling period.
- Non-technical: No more than 50%, 0r 60 hours of your CPE can come from non-technical topics like management, personal development, or communications.
- Publications: You can only include a maximum of 10 hours each year for any books or articles you write or review.
Renewing your Texas CPA license
While your CPE is calculated over a three-year rolling period, you need to renew your license annually, by the last day of your birth month. To renew your license, you’ll need to have an online account with the Texas State Board of Public Accountancy. Make sure you’ve reported all your CPE credits, then, submit your license renewal application and pay any renewal fees through the online portal.
Meeting your Texas CPA CPE requirements with Becker
Becker has over 700 on-demand CPE courses and over 1,000 live webcasts annually across 19 fields of study. Within our expansive catalog, we have courses specially designed to meet your Texas CPE requirements.
Tips to meet your Texas CPE requirements
We know that meeting your CPE requirements while juggling work, home, and everything in between can be challenging. To help take the stress out of CPE, try these tips:
Find CPE that suits your schedule
The biggest challenge to meeting your CPA CPE requirements is just finding time for it. Consider on-demand courses you can watch anytime and anywhere whether it’s during your lunch break or while you’re sitting in the car waiting for your kid to finish soccer practice.
You can even try CPE podcasts where you listen to the material then take a brief quiz to ensure comprehension and retention. Earn CPE on your drive to work, while you’re folding laundry, or taking a walk.
Keep up with your progress
It’s difficult to remember how many hours you’ve completed, when it’s due, and if you’ve met the more specific ethics and technical requirements. Using Becker’s CPE Compliance Tracker keeps all your CPE in one place (including from other sources) so you can easily see your progress, what you have left, and get recommendations for courses that suit your interests.
Block out time each month
While Texas CPE requirements include a minimum of 20 hours each year, we recommend trying to keep it even each year so you’re not scrambling to fit in 80 hours before your deadline. Block out around four hours each month to dedicate to completing CPE or six hours a month if you want to take a few months off during busy season.
Pacing yourself will help you feel less overwhelmed and more likely to take courses that interest you and benefit your career.
Consider what you want to learn
Instead of thinking about education as a box you have to check to meet your Texas CPA CPE requirements, you may want to reposition it. CPE helps you learn new skills that can help you excel in your career. Perhaps you want to specialize in international tax after spending years in personal or business taxation — take CPE courses that help you build that foundational knowledge! Want to specialize in a particular industry? CPE courses in real estate accounting, pharmaceutical accounting, and other areas can make that happen.
Consider what you want your career to look like and take courses to support it!