CPA Salary in Ohio 2026,
$79,320 Median | BLS Data by City

Ohio accountants and auditors earn a median $79,320 a year, $38.14 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with the middle half between $63,020 and $102,230 and a full range of $52,140 to $131,400. Licensed CPAs sit toward the upper part of that band; the figure covers the whole occupation, licensed and not.

Columbus at $81,700, then Cincinnati at $80,640, Cleveland at $80,000, Dayton-Kettering-Beavercreek at $79,030 and Akron at $78,540. The whole table spans just over three thousand dollars — one of the flattest in this batch — so in Ohio the credential and the role, not the city, determine pay.

The Accountancy Board of Ohio sets them. Ohio has historically required 150 semester hours including specified accounting and business coursework, passage of the CPA examination, qualifying experience and an ethics requirement. The state has since legislated an additional pathway combining a bachelor's degree with a longer supervised experience period. Because Ohio is among the states actively revising this, confirm the current route with the Board directly before planning coursework.

Ohio's state income tax is a flat 2.75% in 2026 with roughly the first twenty-six thousand dollars of taxable income exempt. Municipal income tax adds 1% to 2.5% depending on the city — Columbus, Cleveland and Akron are at 2.5% — generally levied where the work is performed. At the $79,320 median the city tax is comparable in size to the state tax, and Ohio's municipal tax system is complex enough to be a practice area in itself.

Yes, and the distribution shows why. The unlicensed end of this occupation clusters near the $52,140 tenth percentile, while manager and controller roles that require or strongly prefer the licence sit at the $102,230 seventy-fifth percentile and beyond. Because the Ohio metro table is so flat, the licence and the role are the only real variables — there is no high-paying city to move to within the state.

Because Ohio's three major markets are similar in character and compete for the same accountants. Columbus at $81,700, Cincinnati at $80,640 and Cleveland at $80,000 all combine corporate headquarters finance functions with substantial public accounting sectors serving Midwest middle-market businesses, and none has a distinct high-margin specialisation that bids rates up. Dayton-Kettering-Beavercreek at $79,030 and Akron at $78,540 are smaller versions of the same thing.

SOC 13-2011 is Accountants and Auditors, a close but not exact match for CPA. It pools licensed CPAs with unlicensed staff accountants and internal auditors, so the $79,320 median understates what a licensed CPA in public practice earns and overstates the entry-level bookkeeping-adjacent end. Use the $102,230 seventy-fifth percentile as the more realistic marker for an experienced licensed CPA in Ohio.

The licence first, industry second, busy season third. Public accounting in Ohio pays overtime-heavy compensation through the January-to-April cycle that lifts effective annual earnings above the base figure, and the move from public practice into a corporate controller seat at one of the state's headquarters companies is the classic path from the median of $79,320 to the $102,230 seventy-fifth percentile. Healthcare system finance and insurance are the industry specialisations that carry the last stretch toward $131,400.