Best CPE Courses for Tax Professionals to Complete This Summer

8/16/2026

The December CPE scramble is not a discipline problem. It is a planning problem, and it produces the same two bad outcomes every year: hours taken because they were available rather than because they were useful, and a state-specific requirement discovered too late to satisfy properly.

Summer fixes both, for a reason that has nothing to do with virtue. You have capacity in July that you will not have in December, and the courses worth taking — the ones that require attention rather than a completed attendance record — need that capacity.

Build the Plan in This Order

Four steps, and the order matters because most practitioners start at step three.

1. Establish what you must have. Total hours, the reporting period and its end date, fields-of-study minimums, the state-specific ethics requirement, self-study caps, and provider acceptance. Where you hold licences in more than one state, this is per licence — and per our post on multi-state licensure, satisfying one state's requirement does not satisfy another's. Enrolled agents have a separate requirement; see the enrolled agent training courses catalog.
2. Establish what you actually need. Different question. Where did the last season hurt? Which client questions did you have to research from scratch? What did you decline because you did not know it? Which area produced the most review comments? That list is worth more than any curriculum.
3. Then select courses that satisfy both — starting from the need list, and using the requirement as a constraint rather than as the objective.
4. Schedule them, with dates in the calendar, in the months you have capacity.

The failure this order prevents: choosing CPE by convenience and then hoping it covers the requirement. Reverse the sequence and you get the December problem again in a different month.

And Choose for Employability, Not Just the Licence

A point worth stating before the list.

Per our post on career paths, the CPE you take determines whether you stay employable in the practice areas you are not currently in — not just whether your licence renews. Substantive technical CPE costs no more than the cheapest available hours and preserves options that are invisible until you need them.

Which means the question to ask about each selection is not "does this count" but "will I use this."

Where the Season Usually Hurts: Select by Objective

Organized by the gap rather than by subject, since that is how the need list comes out.

Practitioner obligations, penalties, and security

Take this if you did not have a written information security plan, if a client raised a data question you could not answer, or if you have never systematically reviewed your due diligence documentation.

Tax practitioner regulations, penalties, and security and its companion session.

Ethics

Required almost everywhere, and the requirement most often satisfied incorrectly.

Ethics training and professional conduct for accounting and tax professionals and ethics and the client cover the professional conduct ground.

Verify separately whether your state requires a state-specific ethics course or examination, because a general ethics course does not satisfy a state-specific requirement, and this is the single most common CPE deficiency.

State and local tax, if you have multi-state clients

Take this if you had a nexus conversation you were not confident in, or if a client asked about a state you had to research.

The sales and use tax training catalog; relieving sales and use tax determination headaches.

Entity work and pass-throughs

Take this if entity-choice questions came up and you deferred them, or if S corporation compensation and basis questions consumed research time.

Certificate in S Corp Transactions; S-Corporations; Certificate in Partnership Taxation.

Cost recovery and real estate

The comprehensive income tax course; 1031 exchanges.

Retirement plans

The area where a summer review pays for itself immediately, per our post on mid-year plan compliance.

401(k) training and certification program or the version with procedures manual; required minimum distributions training and certification; retirement tax guide.

Payroll, if you advise employers

Take this if a client had a worker classification question, a multi-state employee, or a reimbursement arrangement you were unsure about.

Multi-state payroll tax compliance; how to identify and pay independent contractors; rules and requirements for employee expense reimbursements; DOL rules on overtime; how to do a payroll audit; how to minimize and eliminate payroll penalties.

Information reporting

Cheap hours with a direct January payoff.

Basics of 1099 reporting; 1099 advanced issues and updates.

Examinations and controversy

Anti-audit warfare; EA Review, Part 3 (Representation).

Estates and trusts

2023 trusts and estates — Form 1041; wills, trusts, and estate administration; HS 330: Fundamentals of Estate Planning; The Book of Trusts.

Technology and AI

Take this if you have staff using these tools with no policy, which is most firms.

The AI courses for accountants and CPAs catalog; AI Essentials for Accountants; AI Applications for Accountants; AI for Accountants Certificate Program.

The skills that are not technical

Consistently the highest-return hours and the last ones anyone books.

Essential Excel Skills; Excel training for accountants; Tackle Excel pivot tables; High Impact Excel: Dashboard Edition; writing specialized reports; QuickBooks training.

If you are adding a credential

Summer is when this actually gets done. The tax preparer certification courses and Chartered Tax Professional certificate program catalogs; the comprehensive income tax course and the advanced I and advanced II individual courses; the Certificate in Forensic Accounting and forensic accounting training courses catalog; the Certificate in Integrated Wealth Planning and Advice and CFP training courses; and the Certificate in Financial Reporting and Analysis. Broader options are in the CPA training catalog.

Rules That Disqualify Credits

Check these before booking, not after completing.

Provider acceptance, which is not universal across states.

Self-study caps. Some states limit the proportion of the requirement met through self-study, and some require specific provider registration for it.

Fields-of-study minimums — accounting and auditing, tax, or a technical-subject floor. Hours in the wrong category count toward the total and not toward the minimum.

Annual minimums inside a multi-year period, which front-loading can miss.

Carryforward, which many states do not allow — so excess hours bank nothing.

Interactive requirements for certain delivery formats.

And the state-specific ethics point above, which deserves its own check.

The practical approach for anyone with more than one licence: plan to the strictest requirement among them, which usually satisfies the others and is far simpler than optimizing each separately.

Make It Actually Happen

Put dates in the calendar now, treated as appointments. Unscheduled CPE does not occur.

Book the long items first — certificate programs and multi-session courses — because they are the ones that cannot be compressed later.

Do the courses that need attention in the summer and leave the light ones for autumn.

Register a credit tracker as you go, per licence, with course, date, provider, hours, and subject area — because boards audit CPE and the burden of proof is on you.

Keep every certificate in one place, indexed.

Book a mid-autumn checkpoint to confirm you are where the plan says.

And for a firm: build the plan by person, tie it to the technical gaps the season revealed, and pay for it — since per our post on reimbursement rules, CPE reimbursement should run through an accountable plan rather than a stipend.

A Planning Table

Requirement or gap

Course selected

Format

Hours

Subject area

Counts toward (state / minimum)

Scheduled date

Completed

Certificate filed

 

Turn Each Course Into One Artifact

The step that separates CPE that changes a practice from CPE that only satisfies a requirement — and the reason so many well-chosen courses produce nothing.

A course delivers information. What changes practice is an artifact, and it takes twenty minutes to produce while the material is still fresh:

A checklist, where the course described a procedure — the accountable plan review, the nexus determination sequence, the plan compliance tests.

A template or workpaper, where it described a computation or a document.

A client list. The most valuable of the four, and the one nobody makes: which of my clients does this affect. A nexus course produces a list of multi-state clients to review; a retirement plan course produces a list of sponsors whose compensation definition should be tested; an entity course produces a list of Schedule C filers approaching an S corporation decision. That list is the entire return on the hours.

A policy or process change, where the course revealed something the firm does not currently do — a security plan, a data-handling rule, an intake step.

Three practices that make it happen:

Write it during or immediately after, not later. Notes taken with the intention of returning to them do not get returned to.

Give it an owner and a date if the change involves anyone else, and put it in the same place your firm tracks other commitments — otherwise it is an intention rather than a change.

Book a short debrief where several people took the same course, which is also how the client list gets built properly, since each person knows a different part of the book.

The test to apply in October: for each course you took, what exists now that did not exist before? Where the answer is "I know more," the hours counted and the practice did not change — which is a legitimate outcome for a general update, and a wasted one for anything you chose off the gap list.

Where CPE Planning Goes Wrong

• Choosing by convenience and hoping the requirement is covered
• Starting from available courses rather than from the requirement and the gap list
• A general ethics course where a state-specific one is required
• Assuming one state's plan satisfies every licence held
• Fields-of-study minimums missed while the total is satisfied
• Front-loading in a state with an annual minimum, or one with no carryforward
• Exceeding a self-study cap, or using an unregistered provider for it
• Provider acceptance unchecked before booking
• Nothing scheduled, so nothing happens
• Long certificate programs left until they cannot be finished
• Demanding courses booked for December, when attention is unavailable
• No credit tracker, and no certificates retained
• Cheapest available hours taken, maintaining the licence and not the practitioner
• The gap list never written, so the same research is repeated next season
• A firm plan with no owner, so staff development happens by accident

The summary for a tax professional in July: write down what your licences require and — separately — what last season showed you did not know, then choose from the second list using the first as a constraint. Book the long items now, verify the state-specific ethics requirement per licence before you buy anything, and put real dates in the calendar. The point is not to have the hours by December; it is to be better at the work in April.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why plan CPE in the summer?

Because capacity, not virtue. The courses worth taking require attention rather than a completed attendance record, and you have attention in July that you will not have in December. Summer planning also prevents the two December outcomes: hours taken because they were available, and a state-specific requirement discovered too late to satisfy properly.

What order should the planning follow?

Establish what your licences require — hours, period, fields-of-study minimums, state-specific ethics, self-study caps, provider acceptance, per licence. Then separately list what you actually need, from where the last season hurt and what you had to research from scratch. Then select courses satisfying both, starting from the need list. Then schedule them with real dates.

What is the most common CPE deficiency?

Satisfying a state-specific ethics requirement with a general ethics course. Many states require a course or examination specific to that state's rules, and a general professional ethics course does not substitute — so this needs verifying per licence before anything is booked.

Which rules disqualify credits that were otherwise earned?

Provider acceptance, which is not universal; self-study caps and provider registration requirements for that format; fields-of-study minimums, where hours in the wrong category count toward the total but not the minimum; annual minimums inside a multi-year period that front-loading can miss; absence of carryforward in many states; and interactive requirements for certain delivery formats.

How should someone with licences in several states plan?

To the strictest requirement among them, which usually satisfies the others and is far simpler than optimizing each separately — with the state-specific ethics requirement checked individually, since that is the one the strictest-requirement approach does not automatically cover.

What separates useful CPE from compliance CPE?

Asking "will I use this" rather than "does this count." Substantive technical CPE costs no more than the cheapest available hours and preserves employability in the practice areas you are not currently in, which is invisible until you need it. The other test is whether the selection came from your own gap list — the client questions you had to research, the work you declined, the area that drew the most review comments.