For seventy-five years it was professional misconduct for a Chartered Accountant in India to advertise. As of April 1, 2026, it isn't.
That's the headline. The detail matters more, because the new rules are not a free-for-all and the line between "permitted" and "still misconduct" is in some places thinner than people are reading it to be. This is what changed, what didn't, and what to do about it if you've been sitting on your hands.
The short version of the old rule
Clause 6 of the First Schedule under the Chartered Accountants Act, 1949 made it misconduct to "solicit clients or professional work either directly or indirectly by circular, advertisement, personal communication or interview or by any other means." In practice that meant your website could exist but had to wait for someone to find it. No newsletters. No WhatsApp broadcasts. No client logos. No testimonials. No fees on the page. No pretty pictures. Even your Google ad copy was restricted to "Chartered Accountants" or "CA" with nothing else attached.
It was the most thorough advertising prohibition any major profession in India had, and most CAs internalised it so completely that "I don't know how to market" is now the second-most-common thing we hear at AI4CA, right after "I don't have a website."
What changed on December 12, 2025
The 447th Council Meeting approved the 13th Edition of the Code of Ethics. President CA Charanjot Singh Nanda and Vice-President CA Prasanna Kumar D announced it the same day. It took effect April 1, 2026.
Five things matter from that document.
Push technology is allowed for non-exclusive services. This is the one that makes everything else possible. "Push" means you can reach out first — newsletters, WhatsApp broadcasts, emails, ads, posts. "Non-exclusive" means consulting, GST advisory, management consulting, IT advisory, sustainability advisory, forensic accounting, AI-related advisory, research, social-impact assessment. The exclusive services — statutory audit, attestation, certification — still have to operate under the older, more conservative rules. If you want to broadcast about your tax-planning practice, you can. If you want to broadcast about your audit work, that's a different conversation and a thinner line.
"Contemporary" formats are permitted. Images, infographics, videos, modern websites, social posts. This was a deliberate word choice — the earlier guidance specifically restricted you to text. You can now produce a reel.
Network firm websites are no longer special-cased. ICAI-registered network firms can develop and maintain their own websites with materially the same freedom as individual firms. The old framework treated networks differently; that distinction is mostly gone.
Brand positioning language is permitted. "Leading boutique CA firm in Indiranagar" is no longer per se misconduct, provided you can defend it. "Best CA in India" with no substantiation still is.
The scope of permitted services expanded. Social impact assessment, AI-related advisory, sustainability assurance, research analysis, and forensic accounting are now explicitly named in Management Consultancy and Other Services. If you do these things, you can advertise them.
What's still off-limits
The reform is not a permission slip to do whatever you want. Four things will still get you in front of the Disciplinary Committee.
Self-laudatory claims without substance. If you say "best CA firm in Bangalore," you'd better have something credible to point to — a published award, a survey ranking, something verifiable. The earlier ban treated all such claims as misconduct; the new framework calls them grey but still puts the burden on you. The conservative rule of thumb is: if the claim isn't measurable or attributable, don't make it.
Auditor independence. The new framework adds tighter provisions on what you can sell to audit clients, especially Public Interest Entities. If a company is your audit client, certain non-assurance services are off-limits, full stop. This isn't an advertising rule — it's an independence rule — but it constrains what you can sell-by-website to existing clients.
Statutory audit and attestation marketing. "Push" is permitted for non-exclusive services. For exclusive services, the older, more cautious framework still governs. The safe approach is to keep your audit practice present on your website but not pushed in your ads or broadcasts.
Misleading or unverifiable information. Everything you say has to be accurate. "We saved Client X ₹40 lakh" needs Client X's written permission and a defensible calculation.
What to actually do, in order
If you haven't started yet, the first 30 days matter more than the next 12 months. Not because the rules expire — they don't — but because the firms that move now will own the search results and the WhatsApp groups before everyone else figures it out.
Week 1: get a real website live. A one-page text-only ICAI-era website doesn't help you. Pick a template. Write your services, your partners, your contact details, your firm's actual story. Publish it. We built AI4CA for this exact 60-minute job; there are other tools, the point is just to have something.
Week 2: set up WhatsApp properly. Most CAs already work over WhatsApp; what's missing is structure. An auto-reply that captures basic details when a prospect messages outside hours. A list of your past clients, segmented (filing-status, services-used, fee-band) so you can broadcast to the right slice. Deadline reminders that go out without you having to remember. The AI4CA desktop app does this; so does any other WhatsApp-Business setup, just make sure it's set up.
Week 3: write three honest things. Not "5 Tax-Saving Tips" — your prospects can find a thousand of those. Write what you actually tell new clients in the first meeting. The thing about Section 80C they didn't realise. The mistake your last three GST clients had been making. The reason small firms get audited disproportionately. Specific, opinionated, useful. Three of those, posted to your site and pushed once on LinkedIn, beat thirty generic SEO posts.
Week 4: tell the world you exist. Email old clients with a brief "we have a website now, here's the link, here's our WhatsApp." LinkedIn announcement. Google My Business profile. One small Google Ads campaign for "CA firm in [your city]" with a tight ₹5,000–10,000 budget for the first month — enough to learn what converts, not enough to lose sleep.
After week four, the question is what to keep doing. The honest answer is: the thing that brought in the most new conversations. Track every prospect's source. After a quarter, double down on whatever is working and stop the rest. This is unromantic but reliable.
A few questions we keep getting
Can I put client names on my website? With written permission, yes. Without it, no. And even with permission, "look how big our clients are" reads as self-laudatory; "here's what we did for them" reads as substance. The framing matters.
Do I need ICAI permission to start? No. The Code took effect April 1, 2026. Your obligation is to comply, not to file paperwork.
Can I run Google or Meta ads? Yes for non-exclusive services. Be careful with audit-adjacent keywords — "ABC & Co statutory audit" as ad copy is still riskier than "ABC & Co GST advisory."
What happens if I violate? Advertising misconduct is still misconduct. ICAI can take disciplinary action up to and including removal from the Register. The Disciplinary Committee has historically been pragmatic about borderline cases and harsh about clear-cut self-promotion. Err on the side of informative.
The point
The ban lasted seventy-five years. The reform happened in one Council Meeting. For the first time in your professional career — and your father's, if he was a CA — you can build a practice with deliberate marketing instead of pure word-of-mouth. Most of your peers will spend three to six months figuring out what's allowed. The ones who get a website and a WhatsApp setup live by the end of this month will compound that head start for the rest of the year.
There is no neutral position. Either you market the practice or you watch the firms that do.
Building your ICAI-compliant website is the first step. AI4CA has ten templates designed for Indian CA firms, free tier on a subdomain, ₹399/month on your own domain. Average time from sign-up to live site: eleven minutes.