Dr Supriyo De is the Officer on Special Duty to the Chief Economic Adviser, Dr Kaushik Basu in the Ministry of Finance, India. He has a PhD in Economics from the University of Sydney and was a recipient of the Endeavour International Postgraduate Research Scholarship. He also completed his Master of Economics from Yokohama National University as a part of a World Bank scholarship program. He has substantial experience in revenue administration, tax policy and macroeconomic analysis. Dr De’s research interests include economic growth, macroeconomics and technology policy. He has publications in journals such as The Economic Record and The Singapore Economic Review.

This is the first of the talks in the series of Slice of Policy. The speaker discusses about the recent and upcoming changes in tax policies and their implications, the basic principles and economics of taxation, overview of taxation in India and the rationale behind formulating the tax codes. He also discusses on issues, in detail, related to direct tax code, anti-avoidance rules and design, mechanism and advantages of goods and services tax, constitutional division of powers between the Centre and the State, problems of the present tax system, the process of consensus building, technology platforms, tax exemptions, tax holidays, e-governance, VAT.