State Updates
Does a CPA Need to Be Licensed in Every State? Mobility, Explained
In most cases no. A CPA holds one home-state license and practices elsewhere under a practice privilege. The 2025 Uniform Accountancy Act moved that privilege from a state-by-state test to an individual one, which is what keeps mobility working as states adopt 120-credit pathways.
Published July 15, 20267 min readVerified as of September 3, 2026
The Short Answer
No, a CPA does not normally hold a separate license in every state they work in. NASBA describes the arrangement plainly: practice privilege laws let CPAs in good standing serve clients in other states without obtaining a second license, provided certain requirements are met. The privilege has limits. A license is generally required in the state that is the CPA's principal place of business, and a firm still needs a permit in states where it has an office, with attest work rendered through a licensed CPA firm. Because each state writes its own rules, the controlling answer is the receiving state's board of accountancy, and NASBA maintains a state-by-state lookup at cpamobility.nasba.org. What follows is what the privilege rests on and what changed in 2025.
The Shift to Individual Mobility
CPA mobility is changing at the model-law level. The AICPA and NASBA boards approved the ninth edition of the Uniform Accountancy Act on May 14, 2025, and published it in July 2025. The headline change is a move from state-based mobility to an individual-based practice privilege. A CPA's ability to practice across state lines now rests on that individual's own qualifications, their education, exam, and experience, rather than on whether their home state is deemed substantially equivalent to another state.
How Mobility Used to Work
The older system ran on substantial equivalency. A CPA could practice in another state without a second license as long as their home state's requirements matched the national standard, a framework often summarized as no notice, no fee, no escape, dating to a 2007 revision of the model law. No notice meant a CPA did not have to tell the other state's board, no fee meant no separate payment, and no escape meant they automatically consented to that board's disciplinary authority. That system worked when nearly every state used the same 150-credit rule.
What the 9th Edition Changed
The ninth edition did two related things. It added a third licensure pathway to the model law, a bachelor's degree with an accounting concentration plus two years of experience and passing the CPA exam, alongside the existing master's and 150-credit routes. It then rebuilt mobility around the individual so that CPAs licensed through different pathways can still practice across state lines. It also added a safe harbor: CPAs who were licensed under prior education, experience, and exam requirements as of December 31, 2024 keep their practice privileges under mobility.
Why This Matters Now
The mobility change and the 120-credit pathway are two halves of one design. As states pass their own 120-credit laws, a patchwork develops where a CPA licensed in one state might not meet another state's exact education rule. Individual-based mobility solves that by looking at the person rather than the home state's equivalency. NASBA framed the goal as reducing barriers for qualified CPAs practicing across jurisdictions while respecting each state's authority. Without the mobility fix, the spread of 120-credit pathways would have fractured the ability to practice nationally.
How Many States Have Adopted It
Adoption is moving fast and is a moving target. According to the AICPA's 2026 state policy tracker, roughly half the states, about 25, had adopted an individual-based mobility model as of early 2026, with at least 10 more planning to introduce legislation in 2026. A similar count had adopted the new third pathway, with more than 20 states expected to take it up as 2026 legislative sessions continue. Because states are still passing bills, the live count is best checked against the AICPA advocacy tracker and NASBA's mobility tools rather than any fixed number.
What It Means for Candidates
For candidates, the practical takeaway is that where you license matters less than it used to for where you can eventually work. Focus on meeting one state's requirements cleanly, and mobility increasingly handles the rest. For state-by-state details, see our CPA requirements by state hub, and for the pathway side of the change see our 120-credit pathway tracker.
Sources
- 1.NASBA — NASBA and AICPA Publish Ninth Edition of the Uniform Accountancy Act (UAA)(accessed Jul 15, 2026)
- 2.Journal of Accountancy — AICPA, NASBA Approve New CPA Licensure Path(accessed Jul 15, 2026)
- 3.AICPA & CIMA — State Policy Trends Shaping Accounting in 2026(accessed Jul 15, 2026)
- 4.NASBA — New CPA Licensure Pathways and CPA Mobility(accessed Jul 15, 2026)
- 5.NASBA — CPA Mobility and Practice Privilege(accessed Sep 3, 2026)
- 6.NASBA — CPA Mobility state-by-state lookup(accessed Sep 3, 2026)
Brennan Kolar
Founder, Atlas CPA Index
Brennan Kolar is the founder of Atlas CPA Index, an independent CPA review comparison platform covering all 55 U.S. jurisdictions. With over 10 years of experience with CPA review, he built Atlas to help candidates find the right review course based on how they actually learn, not which provider has the biggest ad budget.
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