CPA Exam Changes Effective January 1, 2011

October 1, 2009

The American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) recently announced two major changes that will greatly impact CPA Exam candidates, both effective January 1, 2011:

• New Content and Skill Specification Outlines (CSOs/SSOs) for the Uniform CPA Examination, including the testing of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), will go into effect.
• A new release of authoritative literature, with codified FASB Accounting Standards, as well as a new research task format will be introduced on the CPA Examination.

"Over the next several months, a series of announcements will be made with more details about each of the scheduled CBT-e changes to be implemented," the AICPA said, "from the transfer of written communication tasks to the Business Environment and Concepts (BEC) section to the introduction of new Task-Based Simulations (TBS)."