How much continuing professional education a Arkansas CPA actually needs — sourced the same way every fact on this site is: a board page plus the codified rule itself, never a guess.
Arkansas offers licensees a CHOICE of two equivalent tracks (Rule 13.2(a)): 120 hours within the 36 months immediately preceding Jan 1 of the renewal year, OR 40 hours within the 12 months immediately preceding that date. At least 4 hours of CPE in accounting professional conduct/ethics are required every 36 months, and 1 of those 4 hours must specifically be an Arkansas State Board-specific laws-and-rules course (satisfiable via the Board's own free web-based course) -- that 1 hour counts toward, not in addition to, the 4-hour ethics total. New licensees are exempt from the ethics requirement until their first full calendar year of licensure, and CPE hours in the first calendar year of licensure are prorated. Interpretation trap: no more than 80% of total hours may come from self-study/independent-study/authorship combined (Rule 13.3(f)) -- a detail several vendor summaries omit. Verified by reading the full text of Board Rule 13 (official Arkansas Dept. of Labor and Licensing PDF, last amended 1/26/24) alongside the Board's own CPE summary page.
What does it cost to reinstate a lapsed Arkansas license? →