Overview

Visa applicants nominating a skilled occupation on their GSM application must have their skills assessed by the relevant national assessment authority and provide this assessment as part of their application.

Applicants nominating Accountant as their skilled occupation (currently listed on the Critical Skills List) can select any one of the following three authorised assessing bodies to undertake this required assessment;

• CPA Australia Ltd (CPA)
• The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Australia (ICAA)
• National Institute of Accountants (NIA)

All three of these skill assessing authorities for Accountants have recently announced changes to their assessment criteria which will come into effect on 1st July 2010. Applicants lodging a completed skills assessment before this date are still eligible to apply for a GSM visa according to the former standard of assessment.

The New Criteria:

From the 1st July, 2010 the assessment criteria for Accountants will be as follows;

• Applicants need to hold a formal qualification assessed as being comparable to an Australian Bachelor degree qualification or higher (this is similar to the current requirement).
  
  
• Applicants will need to provide evidence of their English language ability to be eligible for a skills assessment. Only academic IELTS (International English Language Testing System) tests with a result showing applicants have a band score of at least 7 on each of the four components – speaking, reading, listening and writing – will be accepted for skills assessments in Accountant occupations. Note: This is a new requirement. Currently there is no requirement to demonstrate English Language ability for skills assessments where Accountant is the nominated occupation.
  
  
• Applicants nominating Accountant as an occupation must have completed at least 9 of the 12 core accounting subjects, and these must include 4 Compulsory subjects.

The introduction of Compulsory subjects is a completely new requirement. Previously, skills assessments for Accountants were based on the applicant completing any 9 of the 12 core subjects.

From July 1st 2010, the 4 Compulsory Subjects for Accountants will be as follows;

• Accounting Systems and Processes: A basic accounting course.
• Financial Accounting: A more advanced subject, generally taken in second year studies which covers accounting for corporations,  equity accounting, foreign subsidiaries etc.
• Management Accounting: A course in cost accounting, budgeting.
• Accounting Theory: An advanced subject generally taken in the third year studies which deals with the limitations of traditional accounting methods.

The above four subjects must be shown to have been completed by the applicant, as well as at least 5 further subjects from the following list of core curriculum areas for Accountants;

Finance
Auditing
Commercial Law
Economics
Quantitative Methods
Information Systems Design and Development
Taxation Law
Company Law

• Skills assessments completed after 1st July 2010 will be valid for a period of 2 years, replacing the current validity period of 5 years.

These changes to the assessment criteria are likely to have a significant effect on applicants applying for a GSM visa based on the occupation of Accounting on or after 1st July 2010. It is recommended that if possible, all applicants apply for their skills assessment prior to these changes coming into effect.