Institute of Chartered Accountants of India

Tax gaps and high administrative costs pose persistent challenges for governments worldwide, resulting in significant revenue losses and inefficiencies. In 2022, the United States alone lost an estimated USD 606 billion due to underreporting, fraudulent claims, and non-compliance, reflecting a broader global issue potentially exceeding USD 4 trillion. Traditional tax systems often struggle with underreporting of sales, fraudulent refund claims, underpayment of taxes, and non-filing of returns, while administrative processes such as registration, recordkeeping, assessment, audits, and collection remain labor-intensive and costly. Blockchain technology, with its core characteristics of decentralization, transparency, immutability, and real-time verification, offers a transformative solution to these problems. When integrated with Artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain enables intelligent data classification, predictive analytics, and autonomous tax assessment, creating a self-checking tax ecosystem. This paper explores the potential of blockchain in modernizing tax administration, from simple real-time data sharing to advanced implementations incorporating smart contracts, automated payments, and AI in modernizing tax administration. It also examines the benefits toboth tax authorities and taxpayers, including reduced compliance costs, improved audit efficiency, enhanced fraud detection, and automated reporting and collection. The study further discusses implementation requirements, challenges, global adoption examples, and prospects, highlighting how blockchain can enable a more efficient, transparent, and trustworthy tax system in both domestic and cross-border contexts.

The building sector is one of the largest contributors to global energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for nearly 36% of final energy use and 39% of energy-related CO₂ emissions. Green building technology (GBT) has emerged as a transformative approach to address these challenges by integrating renewable energy, sustainable materials, smart systems, and life-cycle perspectives into construction practices. This paper explores the evolution, principles, and applications of GBT, emphasizing its environmental, economic, and social benefits, while also identifying persistent barriers such as high initial costs, policy gaps, and technological limitations. Special attention is given to flood-resilient, natural, and affordable housing models in rural India, where traditional bamboo, thatch, and mud houses—often elevated on stilts—demonstrate inherent climate adaptability. By incorporating hybrid enhancements such as reinforced bases, solar rooftops, and rainwater harvesting systems, these vernacular structures exemplify how indigenous wisdom can be aligned with modern green building technologies to create affordable, sustainable, and disaster-resilient housing. Global case studies, including net-zero and positive energy buildings, further highlight the feasibility of scalable solutions across diverse contexts. The study concludes that advancing GBT through carbon-neutral materials, AI-driven systems, and circular economy models is essential for achieving net-zero goals and ensuring climate-resilient, inclusive development worldwide.

fortunately, multi-tenant cloud environments offer a more cost-effective provisioning model that consumes infrastructure to store and access data. As the volume of sensitive data processed and stored in the cloud continues to grow, ensuring data integrity has become a top concern for organizations. Data integrity is the information that is correct, consistent, and reliable is stored in the cloud. To address this issue, we also present a solution that allows us to maintain integrity in a multi-tenant cloud environment using advanced testing. The standard approach to testing (functional and performance testing) does not identify and will enable us to prevent data integrity problems. That's because these approaches describe the system's functionality and performance rather than the accuracy of the system's data. They proposed a solution that used techniques like anomaly detection, data profiling, and data quality checks to discover possible integrity issues in the dataset. The new techniques work within the testing process, while all data is assessed for integrity before being stored in the cloud.

Objective – The purpose of this study is to examine the potential benefits of the implementation of Islamic Banking and Finance (IBF) in Ghana and opportunities for businesses using MSMEs as data source.Design/Methodology – Primary data were obtained using questionnaires, where 400 questionnaires were distributed to MSMEs operators with a final sample of 308 respondents. The data collected were analyzed with SPSS 26.0 and the results were discussed.Results – The findings reveal that MSMEs (businesses) are yearning for Islamic banking to reap several benefits such as alternative sources of funding, alternative source of savings, reduction of loan defaults and acceptance of Islamic banking among MSMEs. In addition, more males responded compared to females likewise majority of respondents are Muslims.Research limitations/implications – majority of the respondents were Muslims though Islam is a minority religion in Ghana, hence may not reflect the views of the entire Ghanaian population. Novelty/Originality – This study is the first of its kind in Ghana in terms of the data source and size of the sample used. This study is also a contribution to the limited literature of IBF in Ghana. The outcome of the study will guide government to design framework for IBF takeoff in Ghana.

Cost audit is a vital tool for ensuring transparency, efficiency, and accountability in financial reporting. In India, the applicability of cost audits is limited to specific industries, but their potential benefits suggest a need for broader implementation. This article explores the current scenario of cost audits in India, their importance, advantages observed in advanced countries, potential economic impacts, and the support required from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs to increase their applicability.

For the total doctorate awarded in India in 2013, the male-to-female ratio was 63:37. This ratio improved to 57:43 in favour of women in 2021. In absolute terms, the number of women awarded doctorates almost doubled in 2021 compared with 2013. In this study, we examine the progress made by Indian women in doctoral education based on annual reports from the All India Survey on Higher Education. The improved ratios and numbers reflect the adoption of an action-oriented approach in dealing with the concepts of equality and inclusion. The reasons for the progress and ways to improve were investigated based on secondary data and interviews with 15 expert senior female research supervisors. The interviews reveal that apart from the mandatory requirement of a PhD qualification for academic progression, other initiatives have been taken by the Government that have encouraged more women to opt for doctoral education. However, more needs to be done to make research easy for women in India, and such areas, as pointed out by the panel of experts, have been discussed. These findings can be used by other nations that want to bring more inclusivity to doctoral education.