UPSC Optional · 500 marks

Commerce & Accountancy

Financial accounting, auditing, costing, taxation, organisation theory.

Five deep-dives: syllabus, booklist, paper analysis, strategy, PYQ trends (2021–2025).

Commerce & Accountancy Guides

Five long-form articles. Read in order or jump to what you need.

What UPSC actually asked in Commerce & Accountancy, 2021–2025

80 questions across 5 years, taken from the official papers. Every one has its own page with the directive word, marks, word limit and evaluation rubric.

Paper 1
40 questions · 2000 marks total
Paper 2
40 questions · 2000 marks total

Topics that came up

Human resource management and industrial relations · Financial management and capital markets · Financial management concepts · Accounting standards, company shares, banking audit, income tax, costing methods · Accounting standards, ESOP, cost concepts, tax residence, insurance audit · Amalgamation of companies and purchase consideration · Amalgamation, buyback of shares, capital gains computation · Auditing and Cost Accounting

Directive words used most

explain (20) · calculate (14) · discuss (8) · solve (8) · describe (6) — see the directive words guide for how each one changes the answer you should write.

Mark distribution

80 questions at 50 marks

Browse all 80 Commerce & Accountancy previous year questions →

Practice Commerce & Accountancy answers, get AI feedback

Write an answer, upload it, and our evaluator scores it on content, structure, examples and directive-word fidelity — trained on UPSC-style marking.