Chartered Accountant - CA

Categories: Education, Accounting

One of the more surprising action movies of 2016 had the unfortunately boring title of The Accountant. Starring Ben Affleck as a math savant CPA for organized crime with special forces level assassin skills, Ben Affleck redeemed his awful Daredevil fight scenes with genuinely thrilling combat sequences that prepared him to subsequently portray Batman. Affleck's character, Christian Wolff, probably could have qualified for licensing as a Chartered Accountant.

In the USA, a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) is a professional that meets the licensing criteria for handling a majority of IRS-related issues on behalf of clients. The equivalent to a CPA in the rest of the English language-speaking world, i.e. U.K., Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Canada, and Singapore, is the Chartered Accountant.

While the requirements vary slightly between different nations, licensed Chartered Accountants are qualified in their respective domiciles to handle accounting, reporting, audits, taxation, and other functions related to filing financial matters on behalf of individual and corporate clients for compliance with the government’s financial laws. However, marksmanship, hand-to-hand combat, knife fighting, and assassination skills...are apparently still reserved for CPAs only.

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Finance: What is AICPA?6 Views

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Finance a la shmoop what is the AICPA alright people when you think wild and [People dancing in a club]

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crazy parties rock stars jumping into swimming pools from the seventh floor [Man jumps off rooftop into swimming pool]

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teenagers in skimpy swimsuits running down the halls of hotels you don't think

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of the AICPA why because it stands for the American Institute of Certified

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Public Accountants and their parties are just different [Group of people sipping cocktails]

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yeah the AICPA is responsible for setting US accounting standards it

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sets ethical standards so there isn't a CPA somewhere writing off weekly [Roosters preparing to fight]

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trips to a cockfighting arena as, you know travel expense it sets all kinds of

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professional standards as well like common tax practices, financial statement

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auditing practices and quality control for accounting firms so that no matter

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which accounting office you visit the coffee in the lobby can't be cold [Man drinking coffee]

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come on AICPA you can do better than that all right well the AICPA also puts

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together and grades the exam you have to take if you want to become one of those [Boy studying for exam]

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accountant people the uniform CPA exam ...Fail to pass that

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baby and you may only be able to get a job counting actual beans not the [Man counting beans on conveyor belt]

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financial ones so yeah the AICPA is the wizard behind

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the curtain of the world of CPA-ing certified public accounting yeah they're

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they're just concerned with a different kind of green like AC/DC green [Man singing AC/DC into microphone]

Find other enlightening terms in Shmoop Finance Genius Bar(f)