Chartered Accountancy · The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), a statutory body under the Chartered Accountants Act, 1949
CA Intermediate — Chartered Accountancy Intermediate Course — the professional stage of the CA qualification
The complete CA Intermediate blueprint: tier-wise pattern, topic weightage from previous-year analyses, and free chapter-by-chapter study material.
6 papers 100 marks each, in two groups of three70 : 30 descriptive marks to case-scenario MCQs, in every paper40% + 50% per paper, and per group in aggregate Free · tutor-verified
CA Intermediate at a glance
Conducted byThe Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), a statutory body under the Chartered Accountants Act, 1949
CycleThree times a year — January, May and September sittings
ModePen-and-paper at ICAI centres. Every paper runs three hours for 100 marks, with the MCQ section attempted on an OMR-style answer sheet within the same sitting
EligibilityEither route in. Pass CA Foundation and register for Intermediate, or enter directly: graduates and post-graduates in commerce with 55%, in other streams with 60%, and candidates who have cleared the Intermediate examination of the ICSI or the Institute of Cost Accountants of India may register without sitting Foundation. An eight-month study period must elapse between registration and the first attempt, and the ICITSS courses on information technology and soft skills must be completed before articleship begins.
LanguagesEnglish or Hindi, chosen at the time of application. Statutory language in the law and tax papers stays in English in either medium
Qualifies you forIntermediate is a stage, not a terminal qualification, but a cleared group plus articleship already commands a stipend and makes a candidate employable in audit and accounting support roles. The completed CA typically starts between ₹8 and ₹12 lakh a year, with Big Four and industry roles for rank-holders running considerably higher
Where CA Intermediate leads
Articleship with a practising Chartered Accountant — two yearsCA Final — the qualifying examinationStatutory audit and assurance teamsDirect tax and GST compliance practiceCosting, budgeting and management reporting rolesCorporate finance, treasury and FP&A support
⚡ What changed recently
- The New Scheme of Education and Training reduced Intermediate from eight papers to six, taken as two groups of three. Enterprise Information Systems and the standalone Economics for Finance paper are gone; Strategic Management has moved down from Final and now shares Paper 6 with Financial Management; Auditing has absorbed a formal Ethics component and is titled Auditing and Ethics.
- Every paper is now 70% descriptive and 30% objective, and there is no negative marking on the objective part at Intermediate or Final. The MCQs are case-scenario based rather than standalone: a short factual situation is followed by several linked questions, so they test application rather than recall and cannot be prepared for separately from the descriptive syllabus.
- Articleship is two years rather than three, and begins after clearing Group I of Intermediate together with the ICITSS courses. Four Self-Paced Online Modules — SET A, B, C and D — must be completed after Intermediate and before appearing in Final.
- Intermediate now runs three times a year, in January, May and September, which materially reduces the cost of a failed group.
- Paper 3A is examined on the Income-tax Act, 1961 for the May 2026, September 2026 and January 2027 sittings. The Income-tax Act, 2025, which received assent on 21 August 2025 and takes effect from 1 April 2026, becomes examinable from the May 2027 sitting onward. Candidates sitting before then should not study from material rewritten for the new Act, and candidates sitting after should not rely on the old numbering — the substance carries over but the section numbers and the previous-year and assessment-year vocabulary do not.
How CA Intermediate selection works
Know what each stage is for before you spend a single hour preparing.
THE GROUP THAT UNLOCKS ARTICLESHIP
Group I — Advanced Accounting, Corporate and Other Laws, Taxation
300 marks across three papers. Clearing this group alone, together with the ICITSS courses, lets you register for articleship and begin earning practical training credit while Group II is still pending. That makes it the group most candidates attempt first.
THE GROUP THAT COMPLETES THE LEVEL
Group II — Cost and Management Accounting, Auditing and Ethics, Financial Management and Strategic Management
300 marks across three papers. Both groups must be cleared before the Final examination can be attempted, but they need not be cleared in the same sitting or in order.
SUPERVISED PRACTICE UNDER A PRACTISING CHARTERED ACCOUNTANT
Articleship — two years of practical training
Begins after Group I and the ICITSS courses. Two years under the New Scheme, down from three. Six months of it may be served as industrial training in the second year.
MANDATORY BETWEEN INTERMEDIATE AND FINAL
Self-Paced Online Modules — SET A, B, C and D
SET A (Corporate and Economic Laws) and SET B (Strategic Cost and Performance Management) are compulsory; SET C is an elective from a specialist list, and SET D covers multidisciplinary and soft-skill areas. All four must be passed before the Final examination.
THE QUALIFYING EXAMINATION
CA Final — two groups of three papers
Six papers including Financial Reporting, Advanced Financial Management, Advanced Auditing, the two tax papers, and Integrated Business Solutions — a multidisciplinary open-book case study. Passing, plus completed training, admits you to membership of ICAI.
The exam pattern, tier by tier
Marks, timing and negative marking exactly as per the official notification.
Group I — Advanced Accounting, Corporate and Other Laws, Taxation
Clearing this group plus the ICITSS courses admits you to articleship300 marks · Six questions per paper, one compulsory; 70 marks descriptive plus 30 marks of case-scenario MCQs Q
3 hours per paper · None. There is no negative marking on the objective portion at Intermediate level, so every MCQ should be attempted.
| Section | Questions | Marks | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paper 1 — Advanced Accounting | 70 descriptive + 30 MCQ | 100 | 180 min |
| Paper 2 — Corporate and Other Laws | 70 descriptive + 30 MCQ | 100 | 180 min |
| Paper 3 — Taxation | 70 descriptive + 30 MCQ | 100 | 180 min |
💡 The group that most candidates take first, because it is the one that starts the articleship clock. It is also the heavier group to read: Advanced Accounting carries fifteen chapters built on twenty-odd Accounting Standards, Corporate and Other Laws runs to fifteen chapters of statute, and Taxation is two half-papers that share nothing but a cover. Plan Group I by hours, not by chapters.
Group II — Cost and Management Accounting, Auditing and Ethics, Financial Management and Strategic Management
Both groups must be cleared before CA Final can be attempted300 marks · Six questions per paper, one compulsory; 70 marks descriptive plus 30 marks of case-scenario MCQs Q
3 hours per paper · None. There is no negative marking on the objective portion at Intermediate level, so every MCQ should be attempted.
| Section | Questions | Marks | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paper 4 — Cost and Management Accounting | 70 descriptive + 30 MCQ | 100 | 180 min |
| Paper 5 — Auditing and Ethics | 70 descriptive + 30 MCQ | 100 | 180 min |
| Paper 6 — Financial Management and Strategic Management | 70 descriptive + 30 MCQ | 100 | 180 min |
💡 The group candidates underestimate. Costing and Financial Management are the two most computational papers at Intermediate and both are scoring if drilled; Auditing and Ethics is almost entirely written and is where a group is most often lost, because it looks readable and is in fact the paper that most rewards precise Standard-on-Auditing vocabulary. Strategic Management, the second half of Paper 6, is the fastest half-paper in the level to secure.
Where CA Intermediate's 600 marks come from
Six papers of exactly 100 marks, arranged in two groups of three that can be attempted together or one at a time. Every paper carries the same internal split under the New Scheme: 70 marks of descriptive answers and 30 marks of multiple-choice questions built on case scenarios rather than isolated recall. There is no negative marking anywhere at this level, which changes the arithmetic completely from Foundation — every MCQ is worth an attempt, always. What separates the papers is not weight but the kind of work they reward: three of them are computational, two are provision-driven, and one is split down the middle between a numerical half and a written half. Click any block to open its chapters:
Advanced Accounting100 marks · 16.7%
Group I. Twenty-odd Accounting Standards plus company-level accounting — amalgamation, internal reconstruction, buyback, branches. The standards are examined as application to short fact patterns, not as recitation, and the company chapters are format-driven and therefore drillable.
Corporate and Other Laws100 marks · 16.7%
Group I. Part I is the Companies Act, 2013 and the LLP Act across twelve chapters and carries 70 marks; Part II is the General Clauses Act, interpretation of statutes and FEMA for the remaining 30. Answers are marked as provision, application and conclusion.
Taxation100 marks · 16.7%
Group I. Two independent 50-mark halves — Income-tax Law and GST — that share a cover and nothing else. Each half must be prepared as if it were its own paper, and the computation format in both is separately marked.
Cost and Management Accounting100 marks · 16.7%
Group II. Fifteen chapters, almost all numerical, and the most reliably scoring paper in the level for a candidate who drills formats. Standard costing, marginal costing and process costing are the three heaviest blocks.
Auditing and Ethics100 marks · 16.7%
Group II. The paper that decides most Group II results. It is written, it is Standard-driven, and it punishes paraphrase — the marks sit in naming the right SA and using its actual vocabulary rather than describing the idea in your own words.
Financial Management and Strategic Management100 marks · 16.7%
Group II. Two halves of 50 marks each. Financial Management is numerical and formula-driven; Strategic Management is written, short and the quickest 50 marks in the group to make safe.
Subjects in CA Intermediate
Chapter-by-chapter study material built to the exam's own blueprint.
Topic-wise weightage — what to study first
Question counts per topic, distilled from previous-year paper analyses. Click any topic with a link to open its full chapter.
| Topic | Marks | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| How to crack CA Inter Advanced Accounting | method | Very high |
| The Accounting Standards Framework and Applicability | ~10 | Very high |
| Presentation and Disclosure Standards | ~12 | Very high |
| Asset-Based Accounting Standards | ~14 | Very high |
| Liability, Revenue and Impact Standards | ~14 | Very high |
| Consolidated Financial Statements Standards | ~10 | High |
| Financial Statements of Companies and Buyback | ~14 | Very high |
| Amalgamation and Internal Reconstruction | ~16 | Very high |
| Branch Accounting including Foreign Branches | ~10 | High |
🎯 Advanced Accounting is examined as application, not as recall, and that single fact should reorganise how you read it. Nobody is asked to state AS 16; they are given a company that borrowed to build a plant, told when construction paused, and asked how much interest is capitalised. So read every standard by its recognition rule, its measurement rule and its disclosure rule, and then immediately work a problem on it, because the standard only becomes usable at the point where you have to decide what happens to a number. Group the standards the way ICAI groups them — presentation, assets, liabilities, items impacting the statements, revenue, and consolidation — and you will find that each group shares one underlying question, which makes twenty-odd standards behave like six ideas. The company chapters are a different discipline: amalgamation, internal reconstruction, buyback and branch accounting are format subjects, where the schedule and the working notes are separately marked and where a candidate who reproduces the format correctly earns marks even on a figure that does not tally. Number every working note and reference it from the face of the statement; ICAI's suggested answers do exactly that, and examiners mark what they can find.
| Topic | Marks | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| How to write CA Inter law answers | method | Very high |
| Preliminary and Incorporation of Companies | ~12 | Very high |
| Prospectus, Share Capital and Debentures | ~14 | Very high |
| Deposits and Registration of Charges | ~10 | High |
| Management, Administration and Dividend | ~14 | Very high |
| Accounts of Companies, Audit and Auditors | ~14 | Very high |
| Foreign Companies and the LLP Act, 2008 | ~8 | Medium |
| The General Clauses Act and Interpretation of Statutes | ~16 | Very high |
| The Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999 | ~12 | High |
🎯 This paper is marked in three moves and lost in one. State the provision, apply it to the facts you were actually given, then conclude — and if the facts contain a date, a number or a named officer, use them, because the examiner put them there to be used. A conclusion with no provision behind it reads as a guess; a provision recited without being applied reads as a page of study material. Where you know the section number, cite it; where you do not, describe the rule accurately, because ICAI's suggested answers award the substance and treat the number as a bonus. Part I is the Companies Act, 2013, and it is best learned as a company's life story rather than as twelve chapters: it is incorporated, it raises capital, it borrows and secures the borrowing, it is governed and it declares dividends, it keeps accounts and is audited. Thresholds are where this paper is won or lost — which company must appoint an internal auditor, which must rotate auditors, which must constitute an audit committee — so keep a single running table of every numerical threshold and revise from that. Part II is only 30 marks but it is the cheapest 30 in the group: the General Clauses Act and interpretation of statutes are short and rule-based, and FEMA is a small, closed set of definitions and route distinctions.
| Topic | Marks | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| How to crack CA Inter Taxation | method | Very high |
| Basic Concepts and Residential Status | ~8 | Very high |
| Salaries and Income from House Property | ~10 | Very high |
| Profits and Gains of Business or Profession | ~10 | Very high |
| Capital Gains and Income from Other Sources | ~10 | Very high |
| Clubbing, Set-Off and Deductions from Gross Total Income | ~8 | High |
| TDS, TCS, Advance Tax, Returns and Tax Computation | ~8 | Very high |
| GST: Introduction, Supply, Charge and Place of Supply | ~14 | Very high |
| GST: Exemptions, Time and Value of Supply | ~12 | Very high |
| Input Tax Credit and Registration | ~14 | Very high |
| GST: Documentation, Payment and Returns | ~10 | High |
🎯 Treat this as two papers of fifty marks that happen to be stapled together, because that is what it is: Income-tax Law and GST share no concepts, no vocabulary and no method, and a candidate who is strong in one and vague in the other reliably lands near the pass mark rather than above it. Both halves are computational and both are marked on the format as much as the figure. In Income-tax, the computation of total income is a fixed statement — five heads in order, then clubbing, then set-off and carry-forward, then Chapter VI-A deductions, then tax on the resulting figure — and reproducing that skeleton earns marks before a single number is right. Show the head, show the section for every allowance and disallowance, and put the reason in a working note rather than in your head. In GST, almost every question resolves to four questions asked in a fixed order: is it a supply, is it taxable or exempt, when does the liability arise, and on what value. Learn the order and the questions answer themselves. One practical caution about material: Section A is examined on the Income-tax Act, 1961 up to and including the January 2027 sitting, and on the Income-tax Act, 2025 from May 2027 onward, so check which Act your book is written to before you trust its section numbers.
| Topic | Marks | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| How to crack CA Inter Costing | method | Very high |
| Introduction to Cost and Management Accounting | ~8 | High |
| Material Cost and Employee Cost | ~14 | Very high |
| Overheads, Absorption and Activity-Based Costing | ~14 | Very high |
| Cost Sheet and Cost Accounting Systems | ~12 | Very high |
| Unit, Batch, Job and Service Costing | ~12 | Very high |
| Process Costing, Joint Products and By-Products | ~14 | Very high |
| Standard Costing and Variance Analysis | ~14 | Very high |
| Marginal Costing and Decision Making | ~14 | Very high |
| Budgets and Budgetary Control | ~10 | High |
🎯 Costing is the paper where a disciplined candidate can bank a comfortable margin, because its questions are numerical, its formats repeat, and its answers are objectively right or wrong rather than a matter of expression. The trap is that it looks like arithmetic and is actually classification: nearly every mark lost in this paper comes from putting a cost in the wrong place — treating a period cost as a product cost, absorbing a selling overhead into factory cost, including abnormal loss in the cost of good units. So before computing anything, decide what kind of cost each item is and where it belongs, and let the format enforce the rest. Learn the cost sheet first and learn it cold; it is the spine that unit costing, batch costing, job costing and service costing all hang from, and a candidate who can build one without thinking has already made four chapters easy. The three heaviest blocks are process costing, standard costing and marginal costing, and each has exactly one idea to get right — equivalent units in process costing, the direction of the variance sign in standard costing, and the distinction between a cost that changes with the decision and one that does not in marginal costing. Practise variances by writing the formula in words before the symbols, because the sign errors that cost marks here are almost always a misremembered order of subtraction rather than a misunderstood concept.
| Topic | Marks | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| How to write CA Inter audit answers | method | Very high |
| Nature, Objective and Scope of Audit | ~10 | Very high |
| Audit Strategy, Planning and Programme | ~10 | Very high |
| Risk Assessment and Internal Control | ~12 | Very high |
| Audit Evidence and Sampling | ~14 | Very high |
| Audit of Items of Financial Statements | ~14 | Very high |
| Audit Documentation, Completion and Review | ~10 | High |
| The Audit Report | ~12 | Very high |
| Audit of Different Types of Entities and Banks | ~10 | High |
| Ethics and Terms of Audit Engagements | ~8 | Very high |
🎯 Auditing reads easily and marks harshly, and the reason is vocabulary. This is a Standards-driven paper: the marks sit in the actual language of the Standards on Auditing, and an answer that describes the right idea in your own words routinely earns half of what the same idea earns in the Standard's phrasing. Reasonable assurance, sufficient appropriate audit evidence, material misstatement, professional scepticism, those are not stylistic choices but the terms the marking scheme looks for. Build the subject around the audit as a sequence rather than as eleven chapters, because that is how the Standards are organised and how the examiner thinks: accept the engagement and agree its terms, understand the entity and assess the risk, design responses and plan, gather evidence, document what you did, evaluate at completion, and report. Every Standard fits somewhere on that line, and knowing where it fits usually tells you what it says. The chapter on audit of items of financial statements is the largest single block and the most practical: it converts everything else into what you would actually do about inventory, receivables and revenue. Ethics is a small chapter and a reliable one, because its questions are about identifying which of five threats a fact pattern creates and what safeguard answers it. Answer in points, keep each point one idea long, and name the Standard.
| Topic | Marks | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| How to crack CA Inter FM and SM | method | Very high |
| Scope, Objectives and Types of Financing | ~8 | High |
| Ratio Analysis and Financial Planning | ~10 | Very high |
| Cost of Capital | ~10 | Very high |
| Capital Structure and Leverages | ~10 | Very high |
| Investment Decisions: Capital Budgeting | ~10 | Very high |
| Dividend Decision and Working Capital Management | ~12 | Very high |
| Introduction to Strategic Management | ~10 | Very high |
| Strategic Analysis: External and Internal Environment | ~16 | Very high |
| Strategic Choices, Implementation and Evaluation | ~14 | Very high |
🎯 Two half-papers with opposite personalities, and the mistake is to prepare them alike. Financial Management is numerical and cumulative: cost of capital feeds capital structure, capital structure feeds the discount rate, and the discount rate feeds every capital budgeting answer, so a shaky cost of capital quietly damages three chapters downstream. Get the weights right — market value weights unless the question says otherwise — and get the tax treatment right, because the after-tax cost of debt is where more marks are lost in this half than anywhere else. Working capital management is the most reliably examined chapter and the most format-driven, so drill the operating cycle statement until it is automatic. Strategic Management is written, conceptual and short, and it is the fastest fifty marks in Group II to make safe, but only if you answer it with frameworks rather than opinions: name Porter's five forces, name the generic strategy, name the stage of the industry life cycle, and then say what it implies for this firm. The examiner is checking that you can attach a framework to a situation, not that you have views about the situation. Keep every SM answer structured — a one-line identification, three or four developed points, a one-line conclusion — because unstructured prose in this half reads as padding even when the content is right.
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FAQs
Frequently asked questions
Six papers of 100 marks, arranged as two groups of three. Group I is Advanced Accounting, Corporate and Other Laws, and Taxation. Group II is Cost and Management Accounting, Auditing and Ethics, and Financial Management and Strategic Management. You may attempt both groups in one sitting or a single group at a time, in either order. Most candidates take Group I first because clearing it is what starts articleship.
No. Under the New Scheme every Intermediate paper is 70 marks descriptive and 30 marks objective, and the objective portion carries no negative marking at Intermediate or Final level. That makes the arithmetic simple in a way Foundation's was not: a blank answer is worth exactly zero and a guess is worth strictly more than zero, so there is never a reason to leave an MCQ unattempted. The MCQs are case-scenario based rather than standalone, so budget reading time for the scenario itself.
Two conditions applied group by group: at least 40 marks in each individual paper of the group, and at least 50% of the group's aggregate, which is 150 out of 300. Both must be met within the same group. A candidate who scores 39 in one paper fails the group regardless of the other two. Exemption is available at 60 or more in a paper when the group is not cleared, and carries forward to the next three attempts of that group.
Articleship begins after clearing Group I of Intermediate and completing the ICITSS courses on information technology and orientation. Under the New Scheme it runs for two years rather than the earlier three, and up to twelve months of the second year may be served as industrial training. The four Self-Paced Online Modules must also be completed after Intermediate and before the Final examination.
It depends on your sitting, and the answer matters because the section numbers change entirely. The Income-tax Act, 1961 applies to the May 2026, September 2026 and January 2027 examinations. The Income-tax Act, 2025, which received assent on 21 August 2025 and takes effect from 1 April 2026, becomes examinable from the May 2027 sitting onward for Intermediate Paper 3A, Final Paper 4 and the international taxation module. GST is unaffected. Check the applicability line printed on any book before buying it, and prefer ICAI's own study material with its published statutory updates.
The pass statistics and the experience of most candidates point the same way. Auditing and Ethics is where Group II is most often lost, because it reads easily and marks strictly on Standard-specific vocabulary. Advanced Accounting and Taxation carry the heaviest reading load in Group I. Cost and Management Accounting is the most reliably scoring paper in the level, since it is numerical, its formats repeat and its answers are objectively right; Strategic Management, the second half of Paper 6, is the quickest half-paper to make safe.
Yes, through Direct Entry. Commerce graduates and post-graduates with 55%, graduates and post-graduates in other streams with 60%, and candidates who have cleared the Intermediate examination of the ICSI or the Institute of Cost Accountants of India may register directly for Intermediate. Direct-entry candidates must still complete the eight-month study period and the ICITSS courses before appearing.
Plan by hours rather than by chapters, because the papers differ enormously in reading load. A realistic figure for one group from a standing start is around 400 to 450 hours of study, weighted towards the paper you are weakest in rather than spread evenly. The common failure is not insufficient hours but unbalanced ones: candidates over-prepare the paper they enjoy and arrive at the examination with one paper below 40, which fails the group no matter how strong the other two are. Track hours per paper, not hours in total.
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