Council vote conforms resolution in AICPA code with revised UAA attest definition

Representatives at the AICPA fall Council meeting Sunday voted to approve changes to the “Council Resolution Concerning the Form of Organization and Name Rule” of the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct that will conform the code to the recently revised definition of attest in the Uniform Accountancy Act (UAA).

The Council resolution, contained in Appendix B of the AICPA code, requires that AICPA members who are in firms that perform attest services or that use the designation “CPA” or “certified public accountant(s)” in the firm’s name may only do so if the firm has certain characteristics, such as that a majority of the firm’s ownership must belong to CPAs.

The approval given at Council on Sunday revises the list of attest services in Appendix B of the AICPA code to match the UAA by including:

• Any engagement to be performed in accordance with PCAOB standards.
• Any examination, review, or agreed-upon procedures engagement to be performed in accordance with the Statements on Standards for Attestation Engagements (SSAE).

With the change, the AICPA Council demonstrated support for the UAA definition of attest and held AICPA members who perform SSAE engagements to the same CPA ownership requirements that the AICPA is encouraging the states to incorporate into their state accountancy laws.

Under the change, any firm that performs any examination, review, or agreed-upon procedures engagement under the SSAEs will be held to the same stringent requirements as, for example, firms performing review engagements under the Statements on Standards for Accounting and Review Services.

Adding the PCAOB engagements to the list creates consistency with a UAA definition that has existed since 2005 that included in the definition of attest any engagement performed in accordance with PCAOB standards.

—Ken Tysiac (ktysiac@aicpa.org) is a JofA editorial director.