Khaitan & Co has hired PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) director Abhishek Rastogi and associate director Rashmi Deshpande into its indirect tax practice in Mumbai.
Both, who work together at PwC, will join Khaitan around November, with Rastogi starting as an executive director and Deshpande joining as an associate partner.
Rastogi began his career at Ernst & Young in 2000, moving to PwC in 2004, and has written 8 books on service tax and Goods and Services Tax (GST). He qualified as a chartered accountant in 2004 and as a lawyer from Delhi University’s Law Faculty in 2011, also holding a Bachelor of Commerce from Shri Ram College of Commerce.
Deshpande holds a 2006 LLB from ILS Pune, beginning her career at BMR, followed by KPMG in 2010, and PwC in 2011.
Khaitan HR head Amar Sinhji confirmed the hires when contacted, and commented: “Very privileged to welcome Abhishek and Rashmi to the firm. They will add a lot of value to an established practice (indirect tax) and help take it to the next level.
“This is part of the firm’s overall strategy to beef up some of our practices at a national level. We will look at increasing our strength in Delhi too.”
The tax practice had consisted of eight partners, he added. Three partners were in indirect tax - Nihal Kothari, Dinesh Agrawal and Arvind Baheti - with associate partner Kabir Bogra, while three partners and one associate partner were focused exclusively on direct tax work.
The indirect tax hires follow Khaitan very recently ramping up in capital markets with K Law’s Delhi partner Gautham Srinivas.
We have reached out to PwC for comment.
The Big Four accountant had scored a coup in 2014 with EY India executive director Amit Bhagat and his team of 12 joining its tax practice.
Comments
Presumably at the point when the GST council is operating (where the devil is in the detail), we will already de facto be living in a post-GST world, where the advice of indirect tax lawyers on GST and its final shape (as decided by the council) will already be relevant to corporates looking for tax advice and planning.
Anyway, point of headline is that indirect tax advice is expected to be more important from now with the passage of GST, and law firms will be capitalising on that expertise when speaking to clients...
So if states are not a major issue (though it may take a few months), GST Council will begin operating soon and we'll live in a post-GST world at that point at the latest, even if the council will haggle over details.
In any case, even if everything goes smoothly at council, it'll presumably still be take at least a year or more (?) to get everyone ready and for GST to actually become chargeable.
But that window, is effectively part of the GST era and a time when lawyers will already be happily billing clients for GST advice.
One person feeding 8 partners ? You feed an associate, that is understandable. But, a partner feeding other tax partners. Khaitan is no where known for its tax expertise. Puzzled as to how the partners are paid.