How much continuing professional education a North Carolina CPA actually needs — sourced the same way every fact on this site is: a board page plus the codified rule itself, never a guess.
North Carolina's CPE requirement has been governed by a minutes-based framework since January 1, 2020 -- confirmed via the rule's own official history record: 21 NCAC 08G .0401 was amended, and .0410 (previously cited here for ethics) was repealed, both effective 1/1/2020. Active CPAs must complete 2,000 CPE minutes annually (.0401(d)), including at least 50 minutes of regulatory or behavioral ethics (.0401(e)). The Board's own site (nccpaboard.gov) states North Carolina's own 50-minutes-per-CPE-hour conversion directly, in two places elsewhere on the same page ('40 hours (2,000 minutes)' and '8 hours (400 minutes)', both for a related reinstatement provision) -- applying that same ratio, 2,000 minutes/year is 40 hours/year (unchanged from what's published here) and 50 minutes/year of ethics is 1 hour/year. This corrects an earlier citation to the since-repealed .0410 and its stated 2-hour ethics figure, which was already out of date by the time it was first published here in 2026 -- not a rule that changed afterward.
What does it cost to reinstate a lapsed North Carolina license? →