Ananya Sinha is an officer of the Indian Revenue Service. She has over five years of experience in direct tax administration, during which she has conducted tax assessments of over 300 tax entities ranging from high-net-worth individuals to multinational companies and NGOs. She has conducted tax outreach programs in her assigned jurisdiction and has also been part of tax enforcement operations. She has been responsible for the revenue administration of one of India’s oldest and largest business districts, Chandni Chowk – known for its bazaars for the last 500 years. She has also garnered field-level experience of the implementation of historic direct tax policy measures like Operation Clean Money launched after the announcement of demonetization in November, 2016.
In her current role as Deputy Commissioner of Income Tax, Ms Sinha is part of the team that is responsible for policy formulation with respect to the newly launched Faceless Appeal Scheme, 2021. The scheme is a, one of its kind, global initiative designed with the objective to make tax administration more efficient, transparent, and accountable through the use of technology. Ms Sinha provides policy inputs in respect of this scheme to the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT)- the apex direct tax body in India.
She is an Economics Graduate and holds a Bachelor in Law from the University of Delhi. She also has a Postgraduate Diploma in Business Law from the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru.
As a Humphrey fellow, she wishes to pursue interdisciplinary engagement aiming to understand and study the organization and taxation of the real estate sector. She wishes to enrich her insights through a cross-country comparison of the taxation of the real estate sector in other developing countries. She hopes that these insights gathered during the course of the fellowship will help her in contributing to the development of a more nuanced policy that can have a significant impact in increasing the revenue generated from the real estate sector.