US CPA Syllabus 2026 — All 4 Exam Sections Explained

The US CPA exam was redesigned in 2024 under the CPA Evolution initiative run by the AICPA and NASBA. The old four-section format — FAR, AUD, REG and BEC — was replaced by three compulsory Core sections and one Discipline section you choose. BEC no longer exists; its content was redistributed.

This guide sets out what each section covers, how the Discipline choice works, and the mechanics most candidates get wrong. For the detail on any single section, follow the link in its heading.

The three Core sections — everyone sits all three

The Core establishes the baseline every CPA is expected to hold, regardless of where they end up working.

• FAR — Financial Accounting and Reporting. Financial reporting under US GAAP, together with governmental and not-for-profit accounting. Widely treated as the hardest section, and under the redesign its question weighting shifted further towards analysis tested through simulations rather than recall.
• AUD — Auditing and Attestation. The audit and attestation engagement from acceptance through to reporting, including ethics and independence.
• REG — Taxation and Regulation. Federal taxation and business law. The most jurisdiction-specific section, and the one with least read-across for anyone qualified outside the US.

The Discipline section — you choose one of three

The Discipline is where the redesign changed the qualification's shape. You sit one and only one, and it does not restrict your licence: a CPA who sat ISC is not barred from tax work.

• BAR — Business Analysis and Reporting. Financial analysis, technical accounting and reporting depth beyond FAR.
• ISC — Information Systems and Controls. IT governance, controls, security and SOC engagements.
• TCP — Tax Compliance and Planning. Advanced individual and entity tax, including planning rather than compliance alone.

The Disciplines do not carry equal pass rates, and the gap is wide enough to be a real planning input — see our note on US CPA pass rates by section, which is where those figures are maintained. But the choice should follow the work you intend to do rather than the rate: a tax career with an ISC Discipline is a working life of explaining the mismatch.

Scoring: 75 is not 75%

Each section is scored on a scale of 0 to 99, and the passing score is 75 for every section. These are scaled scores, not percentages — they account for the difficulty of the specific questions a candidate was served, so a 75 does not mean three-quarters of the questions were answered correctly.

This matters practically because candidates reverse-engineer study targets from a misread of the number, assuming they can afford to abandon a quarter of the syllabus. The scaling makes that arithmetic meaningless. Our guide to CPA exam scoring and score release covers how the scores are built and when they arrive.

The credit window: no longer 18 months

This is the change most published syllabus content has not caught up with, and it is the one that most affects how you sequence the exam.

The clock starts when you pass your first section. The window for passing all four used to be 18 months. It is now at least 30 months, and three years in some states.

That is a material loosening. Under 18 months, a failed section late in the sequence could cost you an earlier pass and force a retake of something you had already cleared. At 30 months or more the sequencing pressure drops substantially, and it becomes reasonable to take FAR first rather than hedging with an easier section to start the clock gently. Because the window is set at state level, confirm your own board's rule rather than relying on a general figure — our guide to CPA exam retakes and the credit window covers how it works in practice.

Three mechanics that affect how you plan

Core and Discipline are not scheduled the same way. The Core sections can be scheduled year-round. The Discipline sections have quarterly testing windows. That asymmetry should drive your order: a Discipline attempt that slips misses a window rather than a week, so it is worth placing the Discipline where a delay does the least damage to your credit window rather than leaving it to last by default.

ISC is weighted differently from every other section. Most sections split the score 50/50 between multiple-choice questions and task-based simulations. ISC weights multiple-choice at 60% and simulations at 40%. If you are choosing between Disciplines and you perform better on multiple-choice than on case-style simulations, that is a genuine structural consideration rather than a preference — and it is the one difference between the Disciplines that is about the exam rather than the content.

Recent US tax law is now testable. Provisions of H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, with 2024 and 2025 effective dates became eligible for testing in REG and TCP from 1 July 2026. The 2026 Blueprint revisions were written with supporting assumptions so the blueprints would not need reissuing as those provisions took effect. Anyone sitting REG or TCP on materials prepared before that date is studying an out-of-date tax syllabus — which is the single most likely way to fail a section you had otherwise prepared for.

One caution on pass rates generally, and it echoes the AICPA's own framing: the published rates reflect candidate preparedness rather than exam difficulty. A high Discipline rate tells you about the people who chose it.

One structural point sits underneath all of this. Licensure pathways were updated in 2025 to recognise three routes to licensure, and every one of them still requires passing the CPA Exam. The education and experience components vary by route and by state; the exam does not. So whichever pathway applies to you, the syllabus above is the fixed part of the requirement and the sensible thing to plan around first.

What sits around the syllabus

The syllabus is only one of the things that determine whether you qualify, and candidates routinely research it first and the others late.

Education comes first: the 150-hour rule and the newer 120-hour pathway determine whether you are eligible at all, and the answer varies by state. Then the exam format itself — testlet structure, timing and question types — covered in our guide to CPA exam format and structure. Registration and the Notice to Schedule process is its own administrative exercise, set out in our guide to CPA exam registration and the NTS process. And the full cost, rarely a single number, is in our guide to US CPA exam fees and costs.

For the whole route end to end, start with our guide to how to become a US CPA.

Our suggestions

Three things follow for anyone planning this.

Choose the Discipline on the career, not the pass rate — the rate differences are real, but they are a one-off exam advantage set against a long-run mismatch. Second, check your own state's credit window before you sequence the sections, because the move away from 18 months changes the optimal order and the figure is not uniform. Third, confirm your education eligibility before you book anything: it is the requirement that most often stops a candidate who has already started studying.

Study for the US CPA with Learnsignal

Learnsignal's courses cover the Core sections and the Discipline options above. If you are at the start, read the eligibility guide before the syllabus — it is the question that determines whether the rest applies to you.

Our CPD course library covers the subject areas most of these requirements draw on.