[itooshallpass]

I am brand new, a couple months in, to my first job in a tax firm. When I interviewed, my bosses told me that while the CPA credential is important, the book learning is pretty irrelevant to the work we do. Just curious about others’ perspective on this if you have a few years under your belt in tax or other practice. 🙂

[TommyTheCat]

@itoo – i was told a similar thing by one of my partners after i left big 4 and took a gig at a small tax consulting and preparation firm. I don't disagree, but I will also say that down the road you may need it for other reasons, and getting it earlier versus later in your career when you life is more hectic can be a very wise decision. I am doing this now at age 34 with a lot of added background noise in life (lots of work stress and responsibilities, a wife and 9 month old at home, mortgage, etc.)…

For me personally at the time all I really would have needed had I decided to continue my career as a manager at the small tax firm would have been my EA designation. That would have allowed me to continue progressing up to equity ownership positions in the firm. The partners neither offered to pay for nor encouraged me to get my CPA since it really made no difference to them. It didn't hold me back from progressing, and the on-the-job training I received from just real life experience and working under those more experienced folks was crucial to my career growth.

The firm I am at now is a full-service CPA firm offering A&A, tax, and bookkeeping services. The requisite to make equity partner is to be certified. EA wouldn't be good enough to the partners. More importantly though, now that I am doing a lot of selling and business development my prospective clients very often ask about whether I am certified or not.

To me, the pursuit of this license has very little to do with gaining a ton of relevant education in the profession, and very much to do with getting to the top of the mountain and having an easier time selling client leads on my and my team's services.

My advice to me if I could go back in time would have been to start working on these exams a couple years ago, so that I didnt have to be trying to study while helping with the kiddo at the same time. I don't think I would change the fact that I didn't start pursuing this right as my career started…don't think it would have changed my course much at all really.

[Tim]

It's definitely not irrelevant. I will say that when I first went to school for accounting it was extremely difficult to relate what I was learning to the real world application. I had never even used an accounting system before. But now that I have 5+ years of accounting experience under my belt and I'm studying for the CPA exam I find it helps a lot with having a better understanding of those real world applications I've already encountered. I think it's just a flaw with the American education system in general. You need the real world experience along with the book experience to truly understand what you're learning. Internships help but I feel like there should be much more in-depth coordination of working and studying involved in obtaining a degree.

[itooshallpass]

@Tim I agree with your comments on the education system. I didn't choose a great internship, so that's on me, but my tax classes in particular were horrible. It was all so abstract with no connection to real life, and we never even got to see so much as a screen shot of tax prep software. I did have a bookkeeping class where we had mock businesses to account for though, and that was great. I'm glad to see that now my school is implementing more hands-on programs.

[Author]

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