State Board News - Nov. 2007

The Texas State Board of Public Accountancy elected new officers at its Nov. 15, 2007 meeting.  Gov. Rick Perry had previously appointed J. Coalter Baker, CPA (Austin) as the Presiding Officer of the board and the board elected CPAs David Duree (Midland) as Assistant Presiding Officer, Joe Richardson (Houston) as Secretary, Dottie Fowler (Corpus Christi) as Treasurer, James Flagg (College Station), and Greg Bailes (Austin) as at large members of the Executive committee.

The board also approved publishing in the Texas Register revisions to Chapters 501 Rules of Professional Conduct), 511 (Certification as a CPA), 523 (Continuing Professional Education) and 525 (Criminal Background Investigations) of the Board’s Rules. 

The revisions of these rules were mostly clarifications and eliminations of inconsistencies discovered as part of the periodic rule review required by statute.  These rules revisions will be published in the Texas Register and CPAs will have the opportunity to comment on the proposed rules at that time.

CPAs should be aware of one substantive change proposed in Rule 501.91 Reportable Events.  CPAs will now be required to report to the board any unappealable adverse finding in any state court, federal court, or agreed settlement in a civil action against the CPA concerning professional accounting services and the loss of a professional license from another state or federal regulatory agency resulting from an unappealable adverse finding.  These events must be reported within 30 days of the date the licensee has knowledge of the event.

CPA firms are required to report similar events on the annual CPA firm license application.  The revisions to this rule extend the reporting to individual CPAs and require the reports to be made within 30 days.  This rule does not apply to CPA firms, but only to events related to individual CPAs.