CPA Salary in Houston, TX 2026,
$85,090 Median | BLS + Market Data

Houston CPAs earn a BLS median of $85,090/yr, or $40.91 an hour, across the Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands metro, with a published band from $58,780 to $144,190. That is 1.7% above the US median for accountants and auditors, with no state income tax applied. BLS counts 28,400 accountants and auditors in the metro.

Yes, clearly — the metro runs 5.2% above the Texas statewide figure, one of the wider intra-state gaps for a professional occupation and a reflection of how much corporate and energy accounting sits here. Among peer metros Houston sits below Philadelphia at $85,990 and Atlanta at $85,820, and above Austin at $83,120, Dallas at $82,620 and Chicago at $82,360.

It is one of the strongest available here. Energy accounting has its own body of rules — successful efforts versus full cost, depletion, reserve disclosure, joint interest billing, revenue distribution to royalty and working interest owners — that most accountants never encounter and that cannot be learned outside the industry. Houston is where that expertise is concentrated, and the accountants who have it sit toward the $144,190 at the top of this band. It is also portable to energy centres worldwide.

Through the Texas State Board of Public Accountancy, which licenses statewide. The route requires 150 semester hours of qualifying education including specified accounting and business coursework, passage of all sections of the Uniform CPA Examination, documented work experience under a licensed CPA, and an ethics examination. The licence is a state credential — Houston issues nothing of its own — and practice mobility provisions let Texas CPAs work across most other states.

Yes, though this page's headline figure does not isolate it, because BLS reports one occupation covering both. The licence matters most in public practice, where it is a condition of signing off work and of promotion past a certain grade, and in corporate technical accounting and controllership. It matters least in general industry accounting posts, where sector knowledge — energy accounting in particular — often prices higher than the credential itself.

Most industries apply general accounting principles to their circumstances. Oil and gas has a genuinely separate technical framework: capitalisation policy choices that change the shape of the balance sheet, reserve estimates that flow into depletion calculations, joint operating agreements that require billing partners for shared costs, and revenue distribution to hundreds of interest owners per well. None of that is taught in a general accounting programme. Houston is where it is learned, and that is the clearest reason this metro's accounting median sits above both the state and the national figure.

Texas requires 150 semester hours for CPA licensure, which in practice means a fifth year of study before the credential can be completed. That requirement, combined with a national decline in accounting graduates, has thinned the pipeline into public practice everywhere, and this metro is no exception. The visible consequence in this data is the distance between the 10th percentile at $58,780 and the median: entry-level accounting posts that do not require the licence remain plentiful and modestly paid, while licensed candidates at two to five years of experience are what employers here compete hardest for.

Energy accounting expertise is valuable and it is also exposed. Corporate accounting departments in this industry expand during investment cycles and contract during downturns, and the specialist knowledge that commands a premium in good years is less portable outside the sector than general corporate accounting. Accountants building a career here often manage that by keeping a foot in general controllership skills, or by moving toward the service and midstream segments, whose revenue is less directly tied to commodity prices than upstream is.