Transfer Your CPA / Accounting License to Connecticut: Reciprocity & Endorsement (2026)

Connecticut is one of the boards that does not simply hand a substantially-equivalent CPA its license. The Connecticut State Board of Accountancy (Department of Consumer Protection) evaluates you individually — frequently through an experience test counted in years of recent practice — so read its route below before assuming the automatic path applies. What you keep either way: your CPA Exam passage transfers, and your existing license is the basis of the review, not a fresh start.

Connecticut does not grant its CPA certificate on the strength of another state's license alone. C.G.S. 20-281d(d), quoted on DCP's CPA Certificate by Reciprocity page, requires a holder of another state's certificate to have passed the exam with grades that would have passed in Connecticut and to meet all current Connecticut requirements, or to have met Connecticut's requirements when the other state issued the certificate, or to have five years of public-accountancy experience within the preceding ten years. DCP sends reciprocal applicants with five-in-ten experience to the Reciprocal Candidate application (that track exempts the education and ethics requirements) and reciprocal applicants without it to the Initial CT application, where they document Connecticut's education (a bachelor's degree with 27 accounting and 24 business semester hours), one or two years of verified experience, and the AICPA ethics course. full_reciprocity is therefore false even though a licensure path exists (the same treatment as California). Separate from the license transfer, an out-of-state CPA may practice in Connecticut under practice privilege/mobility with no Connecticut credential; since Oct 1, 2025 (Public Act 25-36) that privilege requires a good-standing license from another state plus meeting Connecticut's education, experience, and examination requirements, except for an individual who passed the CPA exam on or before Sept 30, 2025 and held a valid good-standing license from another state on that date. Public Act 25-36 also lets a CPA certificate rest on a baccalaureate degree with an accounting concentration plus two years of experience (or a baccalaureate plus 30 additional semester hours, or a post-baccalaureate degree, each plus one year), effective Oct 1, 2025. Connecticut distinguishes a 'certificate' (the credential) from a 'license'/permit to practice (needed to offer services to the public), which explains the higher annual license fee.