Certified public accountants hold bachelor’s degrees to meet minimum licensing requirements, but often go on to earn graduate degrees in order to earn the full 150 semester hours required for licensure through Georgia’s Board of Accountancy. This is because most bachelor’s programs include just 120 semester hours, making a master’s program in accounting perfect for filling the gap and developing the advanced accounting skills necessary to become a CPA. They are found throughout the accounting and management teams of corporations, as well as operating independent practices of their own or working for world class CPA and business consultation firms including the “Big Four” – KPMG, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, and PricewaterhouseCoopers – all of which have offices in Atlanta. Becoming a non-certified public accountant with more limited practice privileges does not require licensure from Georgia’s Board of Accountancy.
Managerial accountants, financial controllers, cost and capital accountants are also bachelor’s or graduate degree holders found throughout private industry, including the many Fortune 500 companies that call Georgia home. The biggest employers of corporate accountants in Georgia continue to be the Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Atlanta that have become household names; retailer Home Depot, UPS and Coca-Cola. Corporate Accountants are found working in many capacities and for many different types of businesses, whether seeking to maximize profits as part of management teams for transportation giant Gulfstream Aerospace in Savannah, or specializing in performing internal compliance audits in the corporate headquarters of Sun Trust Banks in Atlanta. Insurance giant and Fortune 500 company, Aflac, with headquarters in Columbus, is also a leading area employer of both corporate management accountants and actuarial accountants.
Government accountants usually hold a bachelor’s degree and sometimes a state-issued CPA license. Accountants are found in the Georgia Department of Public Health Accounting Office in Fulton County and the Georgia Department of Human Resources in Albany, among many other state and municipal government agencies.
Featured Undergraduate Programs
Featured Graduate Programs
The Georgia Department of Labor lists accounting as one of its hot careers through 2022 based on the field’s high wages, fast job growth, and high level of annual job openings expected through 2022. Atlanta had the sixth highest employment level for accountants of any city in the country in 2014 according to the US Department of Labor.
Corporate accountants are in particularly high demand in Georgia since such a large number of prominent companies are located in the state. The Georgia Department of Economic Development reported that twenty Fortune 500 companies had their global headquarters in the state in 2015, supporting jobs for controllers, management accountants, internal auditors, staff accountants and more. This includes such large companies as Home Depot, UPS, Coca-Cola, and Delta Airlines.
The Georgia Department of Labor predicts a high level of job growth for accountants in the state. It expects the rate of job growth in this field to be 23% between 2012 and 2022—1.77 times higher than the national rate of growth for accountants. This level of job growth should generate 10,114 accounting positions during the ten-year period of their analysis.
Salaries for Georgia’s Accounting Professionals in a Number of Specialty Areas
The US Department of Labor reported that the median salary for an accountant in Georgia was $68,800 in 2014. This was $2,900 higher than the national median salary for this field. Experienced accountants in the 90th percentile of this occupational category earned an average salary of $119,200.
The 2015 Robert Half Salary Guide provides more detail on the salaries of different types of accounting positions. For instance, corporate accountants with large firms who had more than five years of experience earned the following in 2015:
Forensic accountants in Macon earned between $60,060 and $93,660. Controllers at large financial services firms in Macon earned salaries ranging from $127,260 to $162,120 a year in 2015.
Chief Financial Officers in Georgia are extremely well paid for their expertise, which frequently includes having a CPA license. These salaries tend to differ depending on the size and revenue of the employer. CFOs in corporate accounting firms in Atlanta earned the following salaries based on company revenue:
Salaries for Accountants and Auditors in Georgia’s Metropolitan and Nonmetropolitan areas
The US Department of Labor indicated that general accountants and auditors in Atlanta had a substantially higher average salary than their colleagues throughout the rest of the state in 2014:
Tax Preparer Salaries Throughout Georgia
According to the US Department of Labor, the salaries of tax prepares in Georgia were more than twice as high in Valdosta as in other parts of the state in 2014:
Georgia recently made news when it was announced that their gasoline tax, already one of the highest in the nation at 17.6 cents per gallon, would soon go up by almost three cents per gallon. Because the price of fuel continues to rise, most Georgians are paying upwards of four dollars per gallon of gas.
In other news, the Georgia House of Representatives withdrew a tax reform bill in April 2011 that would have reduced the state income tax from 6 percent to 4.6 percent. House Speaker David Ralston assures Georgians that this tax bill isn’t dead, but rather just delayed for a while until representatives are sure that the bill will, indeed, lower income taxes for the majority of the state’s citizens.