The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) has raised the entitlement of training articled assistants. This means that the number of students for articleship training under a practising Chartered Accountant (CA) will now be increased. With almost 70 per cent of the chartered accountants going to the industry, the articles were facing a crunch in terms of trainers. The ICAI took this decision to tackle the problem and make the administration more effective.
For instance, an associate or fellow in continuous practice for any period from 5 to 10 years is now entitled to train five articled clerks as against three under the earlier provision.
Similarly, for a practising CA with a period of 10 years and above, the entitlement is now 10 articled clerks. However, there has been no change in the entitlement to CAs with a practice of up to three or five years, where the number remains one and two, respectively.
Another important change brought by the ICAI is that the full-time salaried employees in CA firms can also train articled clerks. They were earlier not eligible to train. For up to 100 salaried employees, the entitled number is one articled assistant per employee.
Similarly, when the number of employees is between 101 to 500, the number of articled assistants can go up to a maximum of 300. The ICAI has also decided that the total number of articled assistants to be engaged by the full-time salaried employees shall not exceed the entitlement of the CA in practice or of all partners taken together of a firm of CAs.
CAclubindia
