Registered CPA firms
1,430 firms hold a current registration, out of 2,356 on the Board’s file. A firm registration is a different thing from a personal licence, and the difference catches people out.
Two registers, and they do not join up
The Board keeps one list of people licensed to practise public accounting — 25,984 of them — and a separate list of firms registered to do business. Neither file says who works where. Checking a firm is registered tells you nothing about the licence of the person who will actually do your return, and checking a person tells you nothing about the firm they trade under. You often need both, and they have to be looked up separately.
The numbers do not join up either: firm registrations and personal licences run in separate sequences, so the same number can belong to a firm and to a person at once. Search a number here and you may get two results — that is correct, not a collision.
The legal forms
| Legal form | Firms registered | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Limited Liability Company | 490 | 34.3% |
| P.S. Corporation | 440 | 30.8% |
| Sole Proprietorship | 306 | 21.4% |
| Corporation | 70 | 4.9% |
| Limited Liability Partnership | 68 | 4.8% |
| Professional Corporation | 45 | 3.1% |
| Partnership | 11 | 0.8% |
The commonest single fact in that table is worth pulling out: 306 registered CPA firms — 21.4% — are sole proprietorships. One person, practising under a trading name, with no separate entity behind them. A name with « & Associates » in it is not evidence of associates.
Firms renew on a different date from people
This is easy to get wrong, because both are three-year cycles. Individual licences are filed by 30 April. Firm registrations run to 30 June — every current registration in the file expires on 30 June of 2027, 2028 or 2029, without exception.
Ended registrations do not follow that pattern at all: their dates are scattered through the calendar, which is what you would expect if they mark the day a practice stopped rather than a scheduled deadline. So an ended registration is not the same kind of event as a missed renewal, and the file does not say which one it was.
What a registration does not tell you
- Not size. The file records a form and an address, not a headcount.
- Not who works there. No column links a firm to the people licensed at it.
- Not quality. Registration is a requirement, not an assessment, and the Board says as much.
Although this information is updated nightly, the information found through this service is not guaranteed to be accurate or timely. The Board does not guarantee the use of this information for any purpose and as such, the information obtained from this database should not be considered an official endorsement of any individual or firm.
Not a consumer reporting agency. This site and the datasets sold from it are not consumer reports under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and must not be used to decide anyone's eligibility for employment, credit, insurance, housing, or any other purpose covered by the FCRA. If you need a background check, use a screening company that operates as a consumer reporting agency.