Practice Assurance applies if you hold a practising certificate under Principal Bye-law 51. This means that Practice Assurance applies to practising certificate holders in the EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.
If you offer accountancy services in other parts of the world - for example, in Switzerland, Turkey, Canada, New Zealand or Japan - you do not need to hold a practising certificate and therefore Practice Assurance does not apply.
If you offer accountancy services in the EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, you must:
Practice Assurance review
Your Practice Assurance review visit may be waived if all areas of your professional accountancy work (see the definition in the Council statement on public practice), are subject to a quality assurance review by a professional body affiliated to Federation of European Accountants (FEE) or a government department.
There is no need for your firm to have been reviewed recently, but you need to be in such a scheme and reviewed on a regular basis. In line with common practice, we would expect this to be at least once every six years. You will not pay the annual Practice Assurance fee.
If only some areas of your professional accountancy work are subject to a Practice Assurance-type review (for example, audit work is subject to review, but not accounts or tax work), you will receive a Practice Assurance review and you will be charged the Practice Assurance fee in the normal way.
In the latter case, any Practice Assurance review will, if you agree, take into account other reviews conducted by the local FEE body or government department on your work.
If you are exempt from an Institute PA review for the reasons above, you must confirm - on an annual basis - that this is still the case.