Bhubaneswar, Sept 12: Arbind Modi, an officer of the 1981 Batch of Indian Revenue Service (Income Tax) is now the Principal Chief Commissioner of Income Tax in Delhi. He is also holding additional charge of Principal Chief Commissioner of Income Tax in Odisha.
In his present capacity, he is responsible for tax compliance management in Delhi and Odisha and heads the newly established Tax Policy and Research unit, Ministry of Finance. At Present, he is also a member of the Expert Committee for the Simplification of the Income Tax Act set up by the Government of India under the Chairmanship of RV Easwar.
He is educated, trained and extensively experienced in tax policy, legislation and administration. After a brief stint at the operational level in the income tax department, he joined the Tax Policy and Legislation Division in the Central Board of Direct Taxes in June 1987 as Under Secretary and was later promoted as Deputy Secretary in the same division in 1990. He has held several position at the operational level in Delhi and Mumbai as well. In 1997, he joined as Officer on Special Duty to the Revenue Secretary, Ministry of Finance. Between 2002 and 2004, he also served as Officer on Special Duty to Advisor to the Finance Minister, Dr. Vijay L Kelkar. Between 2004 and 2009 he served as Joint Secretary (Tax Policy and Legislation), in the Ministry of Finance. Here, he authored the Direct Taxes Code, 2009 which was released to the public for debate in August 2009 which forms the basis for the Direct Taxes Code Bill, 2010.
In 2010, he joined the Planning Commission as Consultant where he worked on diverse fields. While continuing to advise the Deputy Chairman of the Commission on tax issues, he was responsible for advising the Commission on promoting Tourism and Culture sector. In 2008, he was appointed as the Chairman of the Task Force on Goods and Service Tax set up by the 13th Finance Commission.
In 2012, along with Dr. Vijay L Kelkar, he also appeared before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance to give evidence to enable the Committee to formulate their recommendations. He was on 2-year deputation to the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank Group in their New Delhi office as Regional Tax and Trade Advisor for South Asia from September 2012. In this assignment he continued to advise globally on tax reforms.
On return from deputation in September, 2014, he was appointed as Director General, under Risk Assessment at the Income Tax Department responsible for mitigating the risk of tax evasion. During May, 2015 to January, 2016 he was appointed as the Director General of Income Tax responsible for intrusive action against tax evaders and creating deterrence against tax evasion in Rajasthan, MP and Chhattisgarh. Additionally, he also served as a resource person to the Committee for estimating the revenue neutral rate for GST under the Chairmanship of Dr. Arvind Subramanium, Chief Economic Advisor.
