Research built to be used, not just published.
Maitras.ai is an independent research and education platform working at the intersection of tax data analytics, artificial intelligence in tax administration, and public finance systems for developing economies. Everything we publish is free to read, free to teach, and openly licensed for reuse.
Modernising how governments assess, collect, and manage tax revenue
Turning fiscal data into clear signals for better decision making
Identifying fraud, evasion, and suspicious financial activity through data
Tracing cross border transactions to close international tax gaps
Leadership
Founder & Direction
With more than three decades of experience spanning Big 4 advisory, senior tax leadership in major mining and energy companies, and a decade working inside a national tax administration, he has rebuilt a revenue authority’s compliance function from the ground up.
Direction
Sujoy Maitra sits at the crossroads of international taxation and applied data science, and is among the few practitioners worldwide who have designed and deployed sovereign level AI tax intelligence systems currently active inside a national revenue authority. His career addresses a question central to every Domestic Revenue Mobilisation program: how does a developing country shift from paper based compliance to data driven revenue administration, using systems its own officers can operate, defend, and sustain long term?
Track record
Across more than three decades in Big 4 advisory, senior tax roles within major mining and energy groups, and a decade embedded inside a national tax administration, he has rebuilt a revenue authority’s compliance function from the ground up, contributing directly to measurable tax to GDP improvements through better audit selection, compliance risk management, and revenue forecasting. This work was carried out within a Medium Term Revenue Strategy framework and aligned with TADAT performance standards, covering reporting accuracy, risk management, and timely dispute resolution.
Capacity building
Building institutional capacity has been a core focus, not an afterthought. He established the authority’s first sovereign analytics capability, trained a multidisciplinary team of more than 80 officers in advanced audit techniques, data analytics, and AI tools, and built transfer pricing audit capability from the ground up through to major settlements with multinational companies, creating capability that stands independent of any single advisor. That same commitment to teaching is why Maitras.ai publishes its methods, explainers, and teaching materials free of charge.
Technical portfolio
His technical work aligns closely with the digital compliance modernisation priorities of international financial institutions: machine learning for risk based audit selection, natural language processing and anomaly detection for fraud analytics, automated transfer pricing benchmarking for extractive sector transactions, real time revenue forecasting for executive decisions, and explainable AI frameworks that keep every model output defensible to taxpayers, tribunals, and oversight bodies. This includes integrating cross border and third party data, including Automatic Exchange of Information streams, into unified taxpayer risk profiles that turn exchanged financial data into practical compliance intelligence. The systems are built to be replicable, designed for resource constrained administrations across the Pacific, sub Saharan Africa, and South and Southeast Asia, and transferable through country owned systems rather than dependence on any single vendor.
Taxation expertise
On the taxation side, his expertise spans extractive industry taxation and resource rent design, transfer pricing and BEPS implementation, AEOI and Common Reporting Standard frameworks, exchange of information on request, tax controversy, and large taxpayer audit methodology, shaped through engagement with OECD technical working groups and multilateral reform initiatives.
Our Research Team
Maitras.ai works with a network of contributing analysts, economists, and policy researchers whose careers together span revenue administration, tax analytics, and financial crime detection.
Our contributors bring years of hands on experience across revenue administration, transfer pricing, and anti money laundering analytics, much of it earned inside working tax authorities and across cross border jurisdictions rather than from an outside vantage point. That grounding is what allows our studies to move beyond commentary into the operational detail of how tax and financial crime systems actually work.
Each study is developed by the researchers best suited to it: economists who understand fiscal mechanics, data analysts who interrogate the underlying numbers, and policy specialists who translate findings into language revenue authorities and finance ministries can act on. The team operates under the founder’s research direction, with contributors brought in study by study based on the expertise each project needs.
Economists
Fiscal mechanics, tax base analysis, and revenue modelling.
Data Analysts
Interrogating administrative data and building the underlying indices.
Policy Specialists
Translating findings into terms revenue authorities can act on.
Revenue Practitioners
Experience earned inside working tax authorities and cross-border audits.
Maitras.ai is an independent research and education platform focused on tax data analytics, the use of AI in revenue administration, and measuring economic activity across developing economies.
We operate free of commercial or political sponsorship. We sell no services, subscriptions, or advertising through this platform. Our findings are built on published data and a clearly stated methodology, and our datasets and code are released for others to replicate and learn from wherever agreements allow.
The record is usually there. What’s missing is the work of making it legible, and holding it accountable to the people it describes.
Mission & Vision
Our Mission
To produce rigorous, independent research on tax systems, public finance, and economic inclusion — and to make that research, and the skills behind it, freely available as tools and teaching material that policymakers, administrations, students, and citizens can genuinely put to use.
Our Vision
A future where fiscal systems in developing economies are transparent by default, where every citizen, and every institution meant to serve them, can see exactly how public money moves — and where the knowledge to build such systems is free to anyone willing to learn.
Research Methodology
Name the Gap
Source the Evidence
Build the Index
Publish
Name the Gap: Every study starts with a question about what the existing record leaves out. Before any data is collected, we pin down the specific gap to close: what remains unmeasured, undercounted, or undisclosed in a country’s fiscal story.
Source the Evidence: From there, we gather evidence directly from primary government records, multilateral databases, and institutional sources, tracing each figure back to its verified origin.
Build the Index: Where needed, this evidence is shaped into reproducible, clearly weighted composite indices rather than single, one off headline numbers.
Every calculated figure is explicitly disclosed as such — the line between what was reported and what was derived is never blurred.
Publish: Before release, every finding goes through rigorous internal review for consistency. Each study is published in three formats: a full academic version for peer scrutiny, a shorter decision ready brief written for policymakers, and a plain-language explainer for students, officers, and the public — all free and openly licensed.
Core Values
Accuracy First
Every figure is sourced, verified, and disclosed before it appears in a published study.
Independence
Our research is carried out free of commercial or political sponsorship shaping its conclusions.
Transparency by Design
We disclose our own methods and sources as thoroughly as we expect the systems we study to disclose theirs.
Knowledge Is Free
Everything we publish — research, data, tools, and teaching materials — is free to access and openly licensed, because fiscal knowledge should not be gated by ability to pay.
Regional Grounding
We build from local context outward, not from global frameworks inward.
Long-Term Accountability
We revisit and update our own indices as new data becomes available, rather than treating publication as an endpoint.
Why Our Research Matters
In developing economies, the difference between a functioning tax system and a failing one often comes down to what the data can — and can't — show. Where revenue is hard to see, it is hard to collect, hard to trust, and hard to defend.
- → Revenue that isn't measured accurately is revenue that leaks — through under-assessment, evasion, and mispricing no one can quantify.
- → Tax systems that citizens can't see are tax systems they can't trust or hold accountable.
- → Cross-border profit shifting that isn't traced is a tax base that quietly erodes without a single visible transaction.
- → AI deployed in revenue administration without local context risks automating the same blind spots it was meant to remove.
Who We Serve
Tax Administrations
Revenue authorities looking to modernize collection and close informal-sector gaps.
Policymakers
Government offices needing decision-ready research on fiscal and gender policy.
Development Agencies
Multilateral and bilateral partners funding transparency and inclusion programs.
Researchers & Academics
Scholars building on our indices, datasets, and published methodologies.
Collaborations
Studies developed in partnership with institutions and organizations across the region.
Revenue authorities & ministries of finance
Regional banks & financial institutions
Multilateral & bilateral development partners
Universities & independent research bodies
Beyond our formal partners, we are always glad to lend our research to those who can put it to use — research scholars, companies, and universities are all welcome to reach out for access, collaboration, or guidance drawn from our work.
Join Our Research Community
Whether you are a researcher, an educator, an institution, or simply someone who cares about fiscal transparency, there is a way to work with us — and everything you need to learn, teach, and build with our research is already free.