CPA firm blog disclaimer requirements
The block that belongs at the bottom of a tax post, what each line in it does, and why yours has to say when the post was written.
Copy it from the card and you are done in ten seconds. If you would rather understand it first, the five lines it has to carry are underneath, one at a time, with the three that ride along unchecked.
Use it as it stands, or write your own. The next section is what a rewrite has to keep.
Five lines, and one of them only a tax post needs.
The plain meaning first, because that is the part you have to agree with. The wording underneath is what ends up on the page.
Say it is information, not advice for whoever happens to be reading.
Leave it out and a post walking through a deduction reads as a recommendation to take it. Somebody takes it, it was wrong for their facts, and the post is the only thing on paper.
Say the law it describes can change, and can change backwards.
Leave it out and a post about this year's thresholds still reads as current three Aprils later. No other profession's block carries this line, and it is the one a tax post cannot do without.
Say it is not professional advice, and not advice about anybody's own facts.
Leave it out and the post does the work of written advice without any of what written advice requires: assumptions that hold up, the relevant facts identified, the law related to those facts.
Say reading it does not make somebody a client.
Leave it out and the line between a reader and an engagement gets drawn afterwards, by whoever is arguing about it, not by the letter you both signed.
Tell them to go and ask somebody about their own situation.
Leave it out and the post is the last word. With it, the post is the first step and the meeting is the second, which is the only version that was any use to the firm anyway.
And three sentences ride along that nothing checks for.
Nothing looks for these, and on a tax blog the last one does more work than most of the five. A post published in March is still on the internet in April two years later, and that sentence says the firm never promised to go back and fix it.
No rule anywhere says “put a disclaimer at the bottom of a blog post”. The AICPA Code is about not seeking clients in a way that is false, misleading or deceptive. Circular 230 is about solicitation, and about what written advice on a federal tax matter has to rest on. Neither hands you a paragraph to paste. The block exists because of what those rules do say, and because tax content ages faster than any other kind. It is a protection you choose, not a form you file. Whether a post is advertising at all is a separate test.
Take a line out. Watch the gate turn.
Switch any of the five off and the block below loses it. This is the check that runs on a draft inside Verand, so what happens here is what happens there.
Nothing is missing.
All five are on the page, in one block, in the right place. A person at your firm still reads the draft and presses publish. Verand cannot publish to your site on its own.
It goes at the bottom, above the sources.
One block, after the last paragraph, before the sources the post cited. Not the sidebar, not only the site footer, not halfway down. A CPA post always has a sources list for it to sit above, because four citations are asked for and two have to be primary: the IRS, the regulations, Treasury, the AICPA or your state authority. A reader who reaches the end should hit the block without hunting, and so should whoever opens the page two filing seasons from now.
One block. And the 2014 notice comes off.
For years every tax email and every tax page ended with a paragraph about avoiding penalties. The rule that made people write it was removed on 12 June 2014, and Treasury's own record of the change says it expected that to stop the practice. It is still at the bottom of a great many CPA sites, underneath a footer disclaimer, underneath whatever the blog template adds.
- The fossil describes a rule that is not there. The old notice existed so a communication would fall outside a set of detailed opinion rules. Those were replaced with one standard for written advice, and the section they lived in now says something else entirely.
- Treasury said the habit was the problem. Its record of the 2014 change notes the old rules led to overuse, and misleading use, of these notices on communications that were not tax advice at all. Pasting one onto a blog post is that habit, still running.
- Three blocks disagree in public. One says the firm is not advising you, one describes a rule nobody applies any more, one says very little. A reader sees all three and believes none of them.
- One block. Eighty to three hundred words. Long enough to say all five things properly, short enough that somebody might read it. The same change that took the old notice away left room for exactly this: a plain statement of the real limits of what you wrote.
This is one of the things Verand checks before a draft reaches you.
Everything above is the answer whether or not you ever use the product. This is where we say what we do with it. You name the bodies that license you once, during setup, and the AICPA and Circular 230 rules load. From then on the block is in every draft, in the right place, and a draft that has lost one of the five comes back Blocked with the missing line named.
- Written in, not remembered. The block is part of the draft before you open it, so nobody is retyping it at eleven at night in March.
- Your wording survives. Paste your own version in. What gets checked is the five lines, not our phrasing.
- The date problem is a routine, not a hope. Once a year, and any time you ask, Verand reads your published posts for last year's figure sitting in this year's sentence and hands you a list. It changes nothing by itself, and it leaves alone any year attached to a rule rather than a calendar.
- A person presses publish. Always. Verand cannot publish to your site, and there is no plan or setting that changes it.
Two more blocks exist, and neither one fires yet.
A firm held out through an entity that is not itself a licensed CPA firm needs a line saying so, and content sitting on a commission or referral arrangement needs that disclosed. Both are written down and neither is switched on, because each needs something that can tell when it applies and that part is not built. If either describes you, that is a conversation with your counsel, not something the block above covers. Your state board writes on top of all this too, and what Verand carries today is the federal and AICPA layer.
Researched by us, reviewed by an operator.
Validated against the AICPA Code and IRS Circular 230. AI-researched and operator-reviewed. Your counsel confirms applicability. Not legal advice. We will not tell you an attorney has read it until an attorney has read it.
For anyone who wants the receipt: the block on this page is the default disclaimer variant cpa-disc-general in the us-aicpa-cpa pack, version 1.0.0, review status internal-reviewed. It renders as a single block before the sources section, accepts 80 to 300 words, permits paraphrase, and is checked on every draft for the five phrases above. The same pack marks tax topics stale after twenty-four months. Two claims in it are hard stops nothing in the product will publish past: a fee contingent on a refund, and an implied ability to influence the IRS. It is here so you can see the claims on this page are settings in a file rather than marketing copy.
The four we get asked every filing season.
Can I just use the block on this page?
Yes. It is the same text we put into drafts. Two caveats worth ten seconds. Check that “accountant-client” matches how your firm is held out, because a practice that is not a licensed CPA firm has a different sentence to write. And have whoever handles risk read it once before it goes on two hundred posts. It covers the five things; it is not a document about your practice.
Do we still need the old Circular 230 penalty notice?
No, and Verand deliberately will not insert one. The detailed opinion rules that made that paragraph routine were removed in June 2014 and replaced with one standard for written advice. Treasury's record of the change says it expected the notice to disappear from email and other writing, and is explicit that nothing stops you making a plain, accurate statement of the limits of what you wrote, which is what the block above is. If the old notice is still at the bottom of your posts, take it down and put this there instead.
Does it have to be word for word?
No. Write it in your own voice. What has to survive is the five things above, and in particular the second one, which is the easiest to drop because it sounds like throat-clearing and is the only one about time. Lose any of the five and you have lost the disclaimer, however well the new wording reads.
A post from two years ago has a number in it that changed. Does the block cover us?
It is the closest thing you have, which is why the date line and the no-obligation-to-update line are in it. It is not a reason to leave the post alone. A stale figure reads identically to a current one, and does most of its damage in the ten weeks when the most people are reading. The block protects you while the post is stale. Going back and naming the tax year is what stops it being stale. Two jobs, and you want both.
Stop retyping the disclaimer in the middle of March.
Every draft is checked for all five lines before it reaches you, and the block goes on the page with the post. Seven days, every feature unlocked, one click to cancel.
Starter carries the compliance gate, every routine and the full crawl. Plans differ on volume, sites and engines.