Why Don’t Firms File Tax Returns on Time? Evidence from the Indian GST

Bhanu Gupta is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Ashoka University, India and affiliated to the Programme on Indian Economy at University of California, San Diego. His research focuses on the design and enforcement of direct and indirect taxes in developing countries. Some of his other work has focused on the financing of human capital. He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Economics from the University of Delhi and a PhD in Economics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Tejaswi Velayudhan is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of California, Irvine. Her research is on public finance topics of particular interest to developing countries, such as the administration of the Value-Added Tax and government decentralisation. She received her PhD in Economics from the University of Michigan.

Prince Dhawan is an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer and is currently pursuing his master’s in Public Administration and International Development at the Harvard Kennedy School. Having completed his BTech and MTech in Electrical Engineering and Information and Communication Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, he joined the Government of India in 2012. Since then, he has served in the Department of Finance, Goods and Services Tax (GST), Information Technology and Health and Family Welfare. He has also served as District Magistrate in various districts. His research interests include evidence-backed iterative policy improvement and emerging technology regulation. At the time of this research, he was serving as Special Commissioner, GST, Government of Delhi.

Ankur Garg is a senior civil servant with the Government of India and belongs to the 2003 batch of the IAS. He is currently posted as the Commissioner (Power and Hydropower) in the Government of Arunachal Pradesh. He has earlier worked as the GST Commissioner in the Government of National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT Delhi and a master’s degree in International Development from Harvard University. He is currently enrolled in the PhD programme at IIT Delhi, and his research focus is Fiscal Policy and Transfers.