WASHINGTON, D.C. (TIP): Natasha Sarin, Indian American counselor to the assistant secretary for tax policy and implementation, is leaving the Treasury Department, to join Yale Law and Management School as professor, according to a media report.
Sarin, a protege of former treasury secretary and current Harvard professor Larry Summers, led efforts to get more funding for the IRS and stayed to help oversee implementation of the tax elements of the Inflation Reduction Act, media reported.
Before joining the Treasury Department in March 2021, Sarin was an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and an Assistant Professor of Finance at the Wharton School of Business.
Her research and teaching interests lie in the areas of public finance and financial regulation. In recent years, Sarin has published numerous papers on tax policy, with particular focus on how improving tax compliance will raise substantial revenue and create a more equitable tax system, according to her official profile.
Her other work spans multiple aspects of finance, including household finance, insurance, and macroprudential risk management. Sarin’s research has been published in top economics and legal journals, and she regularly contributes to economic policy debates through work with the Hamilton Project, the Brookings Institution, and popular commentary in outlets such as The Washington Post and The New York Times.
She received a Bachelor of Arts from Yale University, a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School, and a PhD in economics from Harvard University.
Sarin teamed up with Summers after completing her PhD “on a project studying the tax gap and looked into ways those funds could be recouped,” according to a 2021 media profile on Sarin.
The daughter of a finance professor, Sarin grew up in Northern California, and was captain of her varsity basketball team, as a Yale undergraduate, she landed a summer internship in 2010 at the White House National Economic Council, where she met Summers, who was the director.
He encouraged her to join the doctorate program in economics at Harvard and ultimately hired her as a teaching and research assistant. “She’s never interested in the math problem just as a math problem. She’s interested in how it drives toward a solution that will contribute to the best policy,” Summers told the media.
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