Biography: Corporate Tax

Atul is a Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Laws and is enrolled as a member of the Bar Council of Delhi. Atul is also qualified as a Chartered Accountant.

Atul's professional experience spans more than 22 years with leading law firms and multinational accounting & consulting firms. Before setting up Seth Dua as a co-founder in 1998, he has headed the legal and tax practices of KPMG and Coopers & Lybrand (now PriceWaterhouse Coopers). Atul's forte is taxation, international trade, transaction structuring and antitrust & competition laws. During his professional career, Atul has gained extensive experience in advising multinational and Indian corporates in cross border trade and structuring their investments in India. Atul specialises in tax and legal aspects of financial and technical joint ventures and M&A transactions. He has extensive experience in structuring various income streams in and out of India. He has conducted various due diligence covering both legal and tax aspects of the target companies. He has assisted several prominent multinational companies plan and set up operations in India. His industry specific expertise is in TMT, infrastructure & construction, aviation & defence and manufacturing, services & retail.

Atul's tax expertise ranges from international tax structuring, domestic tax planning (direct and indirect taxes); tax litigation including advance rulings and representations before tax authorities for tax exemptions and reliefs.

Atul's international trade/WTO expertise covers foreign trade policy matters and customs duties as well as matters relating to protectionists levies. He has extensive experience in matters pertaining to free trade agreements and other international trade facilitation matters as well as transfer pricing policy to be adopted before entering into international transactions.

Atul's competition & antitrust laws expertise includes advising clients in relation to dealer arrangements, pricing agreements, M&A proposals, etc. He has extensive experience in appearing before the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission (which is now substituted by the Competition Commission) as well as Competition Commission and has represented clients in various antitrust and competition matters including merger and cartel matters.

In the TMT space, Atul has assisted leading TMT companies in setting-up operations in India; seeking foreign investment approvals from the government, processing licence applications with the Ministry of Communications etc. He has assisted strategic investors in investing in TMT companies in India and also assisted in drafting of various commercial documents for such investments.

Atul is also in-charge of the dispute resolution practice which covers civil and commercial litigation, as well as mediation/arbitration particularly in the infrastructure sector. Additionally, he has extensive experience in tax, antitrust and international trade litigations.

Atul is currently the secretary of the India branch of the International Fiscal Association (IFA) and the Competition Law Bar Association, India.

Atul has also made contributions to various books published by Kluwer International, Asiamoney, Euromoney, IBFD & CCH. Atul has also made presentations at various international conferences/seminars organised by Inter Pacific Bar Association (IPBA), IFA, Union Internationale des Avocats (UIA) and Lawasia.

Atul is a key contributor to a book authored by Seth Dua & Associates namely Joint Ventures and Mergers & Acquisitions in India – Legal & Tax Aspects which has been published by Butterworths/LexisNexis.