Smarak Swain is an officer of the Indian Revenue Service (IRS) and presently works as Deputy Secretary in Finance Ministry. A graduate in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, he completed his master's in Taxation and Business Laws from NALSAR University, Hyderabad. He has over ten years of experience in the fields of income tax scrutiny, transfer pricing audits and financial crime investigations.

Swain is the author of Tangible Guide to Intangibles, an academic work on accounting, valuation and taxation of intangible assets, and Loophole Games, an exhaustive survey of tax avoidance techniques used by corporates. He frequently writes articles and papers on the interplay of finance and technology law. His articles have been published in Nikkei Asian Review, The Economic Times, The Mint, Asia Times, The Hindu BusinessLine and BloombergQuint.