Senior IRS officer Anita Kapur has been appointed as the new chairperson of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), the apex authority of the Income-Tax Department.

Kapur, a 1978-batch officer of the Income-Tax cadre, was till now serving as Member (Legislation and Computerisation and Income-Tax) in CBDT.

She took over the top charge after her appointment was announced by the government as incumbent CBDT Chairman K V Chowdary retired on October 31, a senior official said.

Chowdary was later appointed as an Advisor to the Special Investigation Team (SIT) on black money headed by retired Supreme Court Judge M B Shah.

Kapur will be in office till November next year.

With no new appointments being made in this apex board in the recent past, CBDT at present has a vacancy of five members.

Apart from Kapur, the only other member is Arun Kumar Jain and both the officers have divided all the charges among each other.

CBDT has six members apart from the chairperson and is the apex body for framing policy and administrative issues related to direct taxes and the Income-Tax Department.