1.3 New Pronouncements and OBBBA Testing Policy

The standing Policy on New Pronouncements

Tax law moves faster than the exam, so the AICPA publishes a lag rule rather than testing a statute the week the president signs it. The Policy on New Pronouncements (on the same AICPA page as the Blueprints) is the clock you use unless a Board of Examiners memo carves out a stated deviation.

For Internal Revenue Code and federal taxation regulation changes, eligibility begins in the calendar quarter beginning six months after the later of the change’s effective date or enactment date. Enactment and effective date are not always the same day. A bill signed in July that is effective for taxable years beginning after December 31 of that year is timed from the later of those two dates, then lagged six months to the next calendar quarter.

For federal laws outside federal taxation, eligibility begins in the calendar quarter beginning six months after the effective date (enactment is not the second prong). For uniform acts (the UCC, uniform partnership and limited-partnership acts, the Uniform Accountancy Act, UDITPA), eligibility begins in the calendar quarter beginning one year after adoption by a simple majority of the jurisdictions. Accounting and auditing pronouncements use a different “later of first quarter after earliest mandatory effective date, or first quarter beginning six months after issuance” rule; that rule is not the REG tax clock, but it is why FAR and REG do not share a single lag sentence.

Once a change is eligible, prior content that the change replaced is removed. You are not asked to apply both the old and new rule as equally live law. You apply the law that is in-window for your sitting, consistent with the Blueprint’s current-year assumption.

H.R. 1 / OBBBA — the planned deviation

H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, was signed July 4, 2025. It amends the Internal Revenue Code with staggered effective dates (enactment, taxable years beginning after December 31, 2024, taxable years beginning after December 31, 2025, property acquired after January 19, 2025, and later-year provisions). A mechanical application of the six-month-after-later-date rule would have dribbled those pieces onto REG on different quarter-starts and given candidates almost no common study window.

The AICPA Board of Examiners, September 18, 2025, therefore approved a planned deviation from the standing policy, documented in AICPA’s “Testing of H.R. 1: One Big Beautiful Bill Act on the CPA Exam” memo:

1. Provisions of the Act with effective dates in 2024 (for example, taxable years beginning after December 31, 2024) and 2025 (enactment date, taxable years beginning after December 31, 2025, property acquired after January 19, 2025) become eligible for testing in the REG and TCP sections starting July 1, 2026.
2. All other provisions of the Act become eligible in the calendar quarter beginning six months after that provision’s effective date.
3. Provisions that were scheduled to sunset in 2025 before the Act was signed remain eligible for testing through June 30, 2026.
4. Only those provisions of the Act that are within the REG and TCP Blueprints are eligible. The Act is broader than the exam. Blueprint-out-of-scope titles are not bootstrapped onto REG just because they are in H.R. 1.

The memo is REG/TCP-specific. Do not import OBBBA into AUD or FAR. Do not assume every 2026 sitting of REG is already testing 2024/2025-effective Act provisions — sittings through June 30, 2026 still test the pre-Act 2025 sunset items. Sittings on or after July 1, 2026 test the 2024/2025-effective Act provisions that are in Blueprint scope.

Blueprint assumption: inflation-indexed figures are not the tested skill

The 2026 REG Blueprint’s section assumptions include a sentence you should tape to the monitor: candidates will not be tested on their knowledge of specific tax rate percentages, amounts, or limitations that are indexed to inflation. Later-year inflation adjustments are illustrations, not REG recall items. The exam wants character, timing, basis, limitation stacking, and the statutory structure of a provision (who qualifies, what MAGI does, when a cap reverts), not the CPI print.

Two companion assumptions sit next to that sentence. First, references to individual wages or compensation do not include overtime or tips unless the item says so. That matters once the tip and overtime-premium deductions are in-window, because an item that is silent on tips is not secretly a tip-deduction item. Second, unless the item states otherwise, treat the transaction as occurring in the current year and apply the most recent in-window law under the Policy on New Pronouncements (or the H.R. 1 deviation, for sittings it covers).

Illustrative in-scope OBBBA items (statutory 2024/2025-effective)

These are the Blueprint-relevant, 2024/2025-effective illustrations this guide uses. They are not an invitation to memorize every title of H.R. 1. Inflation-indexed later-year dollars are labeled as illustrations.

Do not add unsourced OBBBA titles to this list. QBI tweaks, extra credit-phaseout formulas, or international provisions that are not in the REG Blueprint are out of this chapter on purpose. If a provision is not in the Blueprint’s content areas, groups, and representative tasks, the BOE memo already told you it is not testable on REG even if it is in the Act.

How to study across the July 1, 2026 cut

If your NTS puts you before July 1, 2026, study the pre-Act 2025 sunset versions of the individual and property rules that the Act later replaced, because those sunsets remain testable through June 30, 2026. If your NTS puts you on or after July 1, 2026, study the 2024/2025-effective Act versions that are in Blueprint scope, and treat pre-Act sunset law as removed once the new law is eligible. Later-effective Act provisions still wait for their own “calendar quarter beginning six months after that provision’s effective date.”

Area III (bonus and §179), Area IV (CTC, SALT itemizing, tip and overtime deductions on the individual return), and the transfer-tax overlay of the $15 million exclusion are the REG homes for the illustrations above. Area V is in play where those rules change C corp cost recovery or pass-through K-1 inputs, not because the entire Act migrated into entity tax.

The standing policy plus the September 18, 2025 memo — not a review-course rumor — is what decides which Code you apply on exam day.