ICAI Draft Deals With Audit & Taxation
ICAI Exhorts CAs to adopt AI, blockchain, cybersecurity technologies
By VIRENDRA SINGH RAWAT
LUCKNOW, Apr (The CONNECT) – The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) has drafted a research paper on cryptocurrency taxation, valuation and audit, ICAI president Debashis Mitra said.
However, the preliminary draft would be updated and nuanced before being submitted to the Government of India (GoI) within the next 45 days, Mitra said on Sunday evening.
The paper delves into the topic of audit and taxation related to cryptocurrency and its technological aspects.
“Since cryptocurrency is based upon blockchain, we are exploring how to employ the blockchain technology to deal with the matter,” he said adding the Digital Accounting and Assurance Standards (DAAS) Board of ICAI had been tasked with preparing the research paper.
“The first draft is ready, but we will update it before submitting it to the GoI,” Mitra said.
Union Finance Minister has last week expressed fears over crypto being used for money laundering and said technology to regulate could be one of the ways to check the misuse.
In her 2022-23 Union Budget speech, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced the Centre would impose a 30 percent tax on gains made out of selling crypto currency. At the same time, she announced the government would come out of its own digital currency in the financial year 2022-23.
Although in her post Budget press briefing, she had clarified the imposition of tax does not make crypto currency a legal tender in India, and that the Centre had merely decided to tax the profit just like any other capital gains.
Meanwhile, Mitra said the ICAI was encouraging its members to update their technological skills to align with the rapid digitalisation of the global and domestic financial landscape.
“The landscape is getting totally digital in nature. So, we are pushing our members into areas like artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, data analytics and cybersecurity,” he said.
“We are also developing audit tools for our members, so that they are totally updated and, in a position, to perform their work to the best of their abilities in this fast-changing digital landscape,” Mitra underlined.
“We believe that forensic audits will play a major role in the future and the chartered accountants will have to deal with this format. We have developed 23 unique forensic audit standards in this regard,” he added.
The ICAI is the world’s second largest professional accounting body and largest professional accounting body in India under the ownership of the ministry of corporate affairs, GoI, and set up under an Act of Parliament.
Mitra was in town to inaugurate a two-day CA training programme in Lucknow.
