One of the thing that bother many business people is accounting and tax matter, this part in business give many nightmares because of complex process and strict deadlines involved, this is especially true where one is inept in accounting or finance. File tax returns and preparing financial statement is not much of a big issue for big businesses because they have an accounting department to do all these, but small businesses with inadequate capital have to hassle between certified public account (CPA) or Enrolled Agent(EA) to file their tax returns or prepare their book of accounts click here for more. This article highlights some disparities between CPA and EA professionals to assist you to choose the appropriate one for your accounting or tax-related concerns.
One of the distinctions between CPA and EA agents are accounting or financial services they can provide, CPA professionals are permitted to provide a variety of accounting and finance-related matters where EA can only help you in tax-related matters, their licensing authorities differ significantly, in some countries CPA agents are licensed by the state while EA professionals are licensed by the federal government see more on this homepage.
It also good to know that the process of becoming a CPA or EA professional varies to a great extent, becoming a CPA professional is relatively lengthy and the requirements are quite high, one needs to have a Bsc degree in accounting or finance-related course with about 120 to 150 credit hours to be allowed to sit for a CPA certification exam, once this is completed it is mandatory to work under the supervision of qualified and experienced CPA profession for a given amount of time before a license is issued, however, to become an EA a degree is not a requirement, all that is needed is to pass a three part exam in the area of taxation, representation, and ethics, to keep their status active, EA professionals are required to renew their taxation knowledge after every three years view here for more about EA and CPA agents.
The confusion may arise when it comes to picking between CPA or EA, but in case you have a big business the law expects you to prepare and present a financial statement annually which must be verified by an impartial auditor, this is why you need the services of CPA agent, it is also good to hire them for tax-related matters because of the complexity of financial matters in big corporations, but the small enterprise is not required to audit their accounts, but they have to file their tax returns a service they can receive from EA professionals. Those are some differences between CPA and EA professionals.
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