Editorial Policy. How we make what we publish.

Our Editorial Mission

Aditya Gupta Official exists to publish rigorous, plain-language financial and accounting education for Indian readers. Every piece on the Site is produced with three goals in mind. The first is accuracy — the content must reflect the rules, frameworks, and data that are actually in force at the time of publication, drawing on primary sources rather than secondary commentary wherever possible. The second is clarity — readers must be able to follow the explanation without prior expertise, without the artificial complexity that traps beginners on many finance sites. The third is independence — recommendations must rest on editorial merit, not on commercial relationships.

This policy sets out the processes and standards that translate those three goals into practice. It applies to every piece of content on the Site — blog posts, course lessons, calculator descriptions, glossary entries, infographics, and downloadable resources. It does not apply to user-submitted comments or to content on third-party websites that we link to.

How Topics Are Selected

Topic selection is the start of editorial work. We add topics to the editorial backlog from four sources:

• Reader requests. Questions submitted through the Contact form, suggestions left in social-media replies, and patterns in search queries that bring readers to the Site all feed into the backlog. If multiple readers ask a similar question, the underlying topic is prioritised.
• Regulatory and statutory changes. Each Union Budget, every notification from the Central Board of Direct Taxes, every circular from SEBI, RBI, or the GST Council, and every significant court ruling can trigger a content update or a new piece. We monitor these sources continuously and add the work needed to keep affected content current.
• Coverage gaps. Where we know a hub (Courses, Blogs, Tools, Learn, Glossary) lacks coverage of a topic that an Indian reader is likely to need, we schedule the work to fill the gap.
• Underlying market or industry shifts. New product categories — say, the launch of a sovereign green bond, the introduction of small-cap-focused ETFs, or the rollout of a new pension product — get covered when they reach a level of relevance to the typical retail reader.

Topics are ranked by the size of the reader benefit (how many readers does this help?), the urgency (does a deadline like ITR filing make this time-sensitive?), and the gap (does the open web already have good coverage we can simply link to?).

Research and Sourcing

For every piece of content, the author begins by collecting primary sources. The default hierarchy of sources, from most to least authoritative, is:

1. Statutes, rules, notifications, and circulars — the Income Tax Act 1961, the Central Goods and Services Tax Act 2017, SEBI regulations, the RBI Master Directions, and similar primary law.
2. Regulator and exchange websites — incometax.gov.in, gst.gov.in, sebi.gov.in, rbi.org.in, nseindia.com, bseindia.com, mcxindia.com, ncdex.com.
3. Official handbooks and FAQs published by regulators or institutions (for example, the AMFI FAQ for mutual funds, the PFRDA handbooks for NPS).
4. Audited disclosures of named issuers — annual reports, offer documents, prospectuses.
5. Peer-reviewed academic literature and textbook references on the underlying finance or accounting concept.

Secondary sources — financial-media articles, broker research notes, AMC commentary — are used only to confirm or contextualise what primary sources already say. We do not republish secondary sources in summary form as our own work.

Where a source is cited in the body of an article, the citation links directly to the underlying page (not to a summary or news article about it). Where a number is quoted — a tax slab, a deduction limit, an interest rate, a contract specification — the source and the as-of date are recorded in the editorial draft even if not all of that detail makes it into the published version.

Writing and Style

Our house style favours short paragraphs, concrete examples, and named Indian instruments rather than abstract Western examples. Where a concept is universal, we explain it in plain English first and then anchor it with an Indian example — a Nifty option, a HDFC Bank balance sheet, a PPF account, a typical Maharashtra GST scenario. Where a topic is region-specific — say, the Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana — we explain it in its full Indian context without artificial framing.

We avoid three habits common on Indian finance sites: jargon used to signal sophistication, vague hedging language (“returns may vary depending on market conditions”) that fills space without informing, and copy-pasted regulatory language that the reader cannot decode without a glossary. When a technical term must be used, we define it in line on first appearance and add it to the glossary.

Indian English conventions apply throughout — “lakh” and “crore” used naturally, dates written DD/MM/YYYY, currency shown as INR or ₹, and proper nouns used in their commonly accepted Indian spellings.

Review and Fact-Checking

This section describes the process followed for content published or revised from September 2026 onward. It is a statement of the standard now in force, not a claim about how every page already on the Site was produced. Earlier pages were written by the same single author, but without this process written down, and they are being brought up to it progressively rather than all at once.

There is one author on this Site and no second reviewer, so verification is self-verification and is described as such rather than dressed up as an editorial board. In practice it consists of:

1. Any statement of a tax rule, a scheme limit, a statutory formula or a regulatory requirement is checked against the primary instrument — the Act, the rules made under it, the scheme notification, or the regulator’s own published material — and that instrument is named on the page so a reader can check it independently.
2. Worked numerical examples are computed rather than asserted, and the method is stated on the page so the arithmetic can be reproduced.
3. Calculator outputs are checked against a separately computed worked example before a change to a calculator is released.
4. Where a figure is set commercially rather than by statute — a bank’s interest rate, an issuer’s fee, a lender’s eligibility threshold — the page says so, and does not present it as a rule.
5. Where something cannot be verified against a primary source, it is not published as fact.

Self-verification by a single author has real limits, and pretending otherwise would defeat the purpose of publishing this policy. The mitigation is transparency, not a claim of infallibility: pages name the source they rely on and the date it was checked, so a reader is never asked to trust the author in place of the source.

Use of AI Tools

This section also states the standard in force for content published or revised from September 2026 onward.

Generative-AI tools are used on this Site — for outlining, drafting assistance, rephrasing, and language and structure editing, and also for building and auditing the Site itself.

What AI is not used for: it is not treated as a source. No rate, limit, section number, deadline or statutory formula is published because a model produced it. Every such claim is checked against the primary instrument named on the page.

The author is responsible for everything published here regardless of which tools were involved in producing it. Describing a piece as AI-assisted does not transfer responsibility for an error, and no page on this Site should be read as having been reviewed by anyone other than its single named author.

Corrections Policy

Mistakes happen. When a reader spots one, our policy is to fix it quickly and transparently. The workflow is:

1. A correction request reaches us via the Contact form or email.
2. The author verifies the issue against the primary source. If the issue is real, the content is updated.
3. The “Last updated” date on the page is revised. For substantive corrections — a wrong number, a wrong rule, a misstated formula — a brief Corrections note may be added at the foot of the article describing what was changed and when.
4. The reader who reported the error is acknowledged in the reply, and we thank them for the help.

For trivial corrections (typos, minor stylistic edits) the date is updated but no separate note is added. We do not delete history of substantive corrections; transparency about errors is part of building trust with the reader. Verified corrections are typically published within 48 working hours.

Conflicts of Interest

Where a piece of content discusses a named product, brand, or vendor with whom we have a commercial relationship (typically an affiliate program), the relationship is disclosed in line in the article and through the global Affiliate Disclosure page. The presence of a commercial relationship does not change the editorial position of the article. Where coverage would be perceptibly slanted by the relationship — say, in a “best brokers” comparison where one of the candidates is also an affiliate — we either remove the affiliate link from the comparison or, where appropriate, decline to publish the comparison at all.

The Site has a single author, so there are no other writers to reassign a piece to. We do not publish recommendations to buy or sell named securities, and named companies, funds and products are used for illustration only, so the conflict surface is narrower than at a research firm.

Sponsored Content and Native Advertising

Sponsored content — content for which a brand has paid us — is separated from editorial content in two ways. First, the placement is labelled clearly using language the reader cannot reasonably miss (“Sponsored”, “Sponsored placement”, “Partner content”). Second, the piece is excluded from our standard editorial recommendations workflow. A sponsored review of a product is not a substitute for, and does not replace, our independent editorial coverage of the same product category.

We will not accept sponsorships from unregulated investment schemes, get-rich-quick programs, deposit-taking entities that are not subject to RBI or SEBI supervision, or products that target vulnerable audiences. Where a sponsorship request crosses ethical lines, we decline it. The Site’s reader trust is worth more than the sponsorship fee.

Author Attribution

All content on this Site is written by Aditya Gupta. There is one author. No guest writer has contributed to the Site, and no external expert has reviewed its content.

Articles, comparisons, use-case scenarios, calculators, converters, course lessons, credit-card reviews, Learn topics and glossary pages carry a visible byline naming the author, together with either the source the page relies on or the method it uses, and the date that source was checked. Index and directory pages, product and checkout pages, and the legal pages do not carry a byline, because there is no editorial claim on them to attribute.

If a guest contributor or an external reviewer is ever involved, that person will be named on the page, their credentials stated, and this section updated to reflect it. Until then, this section says what is true: one named author, writing in public, citing sources.

Standards for Investment Discussions

Discussion of named investment products on the Site follows a strict standard. The discussion is permitted only where it serves an educational purpose — for example, using a real mutual fund to illustrate how the total expense ratio works, or using a real listed company to illustrate how to read a segment-revenue note in a balance sheet. The discussion is not permitted where it would resemble a recommendation to invest in or avoid the specific product.

Returns figures cited in discussions are clearly attributed to a period and a source. Past performance is always accompanied by the standard reminder that it is not indicative of future results. Comparisons across products use comparable horizons, comparable benchmarks, and clearly stated assumptions.

Ethical Use of Reader Data

Reader data captured through analytics or the Contact form is used only for the purposes set out in our Privacy Policy. We do not sell email addresses, we do not share Contact-form messages with third parties beyond the service providers needed to deliver the email, and we do not use reader data to derive identifying profiles for advertising. Aggregate analytics inform our editorial decisions; they do not become a marketing dataset.

Updates to This Policy

We revise this Editorial Policy when our workflows change in any material way, when we adopt new tools that affect how content is produced, or when regulatory guidance evolves. The “Last updated” date at the top of the page indicates the most recent revision.

Contact

For questions about this Editorial Policy, including questions about a specific article or a correction request, please email contact@adityaguptaofficial.com or use the structured form on our Contact page.