Moral Character - Statement

The Board has a statutory obligation(Section 901.253) to determine that each person awarded a Texas CPA certificate is of good moral character.

Good moral character is demonstrated by the lack of a history of dishonest or felonious acts. The Board considers several areas in evaluating an applicant's moral character. These include:

• Responses to questions on the application relating to arrests, charges, convictions, probations and/or deferred adjudications of a felony or misdemeanor other than misdemeanor driving offenses such as moving violations (NOTE: DWIs are not considered misdemeanor driving offenses).
• The Board will access the Texas Department of Public Safety – Crime Records Division using a computerized criminal history (CCH) verification check of each applicant who submits an Application of Intent and a second check on applicants who submit an application for the Issuance of the CPA Certificate. Additional Texas DPS checks may be conducted if warranted. The Texas DPS – Crime Records Department maintains records of arrests, charges, convictions, probations and deferred adjudications of misdemeanor and felony offenses that occur in Texas. Records of these activities are reported to the Board for further investigation. If an applicant was 17 years of age or older at the time of the arrest, it should be reported to the Board. You are not required to report criminal records that have been expunged or sealed by an order of the court. You are required to report criminal records subject to a non-disclosure order.
• The Board also considers the status of any type of professional license and denial of examination privileges by any other state or federal agency.

If you provided a “yes” response on the Application of Intent, you must complete and submit a Background Statement form for each offense.

Each Eligibility Application, as well as the Issuance Application for the CPA Certificate, asks questions about the applicant's moral character. If you provided information about an offense to the Board on a prior application, you need not repeat it on subsequent applications. However, you must report any new offense along with detailed information.