Transfer Pricing

An economic discipline applied to taxation in to try and prevent companies from shifting income to low tax or no tax jurisdictions.

BEPS, MAPs and APAs, OECD, Tax Planning, Tax Treaties, Transfer Pricing, United Nations

(Temple Tax Chambers; King’s College London)/ /Leave a comment

The OECD BEPS project was kicked off by the observation that the interaction of domestic tax systems sometimes leads to an overlap, resulting in double taxation as well as gaps, which result in an item of income not being taxed anywhere, thus resulting in so called “double non-taxation”. Co-operation among countries historically addressed double taxation…

BEPS, OECD, Transfer Pricing

(International tax professional)/ /Leave a comment

(“Every in-house tax department should have their own IT/Financial systems capacity” – JHM, TP Minds London, 2015.) The unexpected benefit from country by reporting (“CbyC”) reporting is that tax departments may learn something about their own groups’ financial systems. What is there to learn? If you are in-house, answer these four questions: 1. Do you…

State Aid, Transfer Pricing

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Since the press releases confirming negative State Aid decisions in the Starbucks and Fiat tax ruling cases late October, the EU tax law community is still eagerly awaiting the publication of the actual decisions (to be published here and here). Most likely, the decisions will hinge on the concrete transfer pricing calculations made (or accepted)…

BEPS, State Aid, Transfer Pricing

(Texas A&M University Law)/ /Leave a comment

Starbucks Manufacturing BV (SMBV), based in the Netherlands, is the only coffee roasting company in the Starbucks group in Europe. It sells and distributes roasted coffee and coffee-related products (e.g. cups, packaged food, pastries) to Starbucks outlets in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.  Read my previous comments on this case post here. The EU…

BEPS, OECD, Tax Avoidance, Tax Planning, Tax Policy, Transfer Pricing

(Temple Tax Chambers; King’s College London)/ /1 Comment

The longstanding view on application of the arm’s length principle is that it is generally based on a comparison of the conditions in a controlled transaction with the conditions in transactions between independent enterprises. A transaction, for this purpose, almost always involves a contract. This is because a contract, whether made in writing, orally or…

EU/EEA, State Aid, Transfer Pricing

(International tax professional)/ /2 Comments

Introduction It has been a few weeks now since the Commission has made public its decisions in the FIAT and Starbucks cases.  I understand that the Commission, the countries involved and the taxpayers are now going through the decisions themselves, agreeing on what information is too confidential to be published, before the actual – blacked…

BEPS, EU/EEA, Transfer Pricing

(Mircea and Partners Law Firm)/ /1 Comment

According to EU law the prevailing divergences between the national tax systems shall not be corrected by unilateral measures that grant fiscal advantages to firms, which are affected by the disparities between tax systems[1]. Equally, the corrections implemented unilaterally that mean to neutralise the disparities between tax systems shall be aligned with the logic of…

BEPS, State Aid, Tax Planning, Transfer Pricing

(Texas A&M University Law)/

Both Starbucks and Fiat represent, if one listened closely to the live press release broadcast, an first salvo by the EU Commission to establish that it has the authority, under a State Aid premise, to step into the shoes of the national revenue authority and re-allocate profits of an enterprise according to the EU Commission’s…

BEPS, OECD, Tax Avoidance, Tax Policy, Tax Treaties, Transfer Pricing

(University of Sao Paulo; Lacaz Martins, Pereira Neto, Gurevich & Schoueri Advogados) and (Lacaz Martins, Pereira Neto, Gurevich & Schoueri Advogados)/ /Leave a comment

As from the first BEPS proposals with respect to intangibles, it has been considered that the Arm’s Length Standard (“ALS”) is “slowly but surely being relegated to the back seat” of the OECD Guidelines.[1. R. Robillard, BEPS: Is the OECD Now at the Gates of Global Formulary Apportionment?, 43 Intertax 447, at 447.] Indeed, some…

BEPS, OECD, Tax Avoidance, Tax Policy, Tax Treaties, Transfer Pricing

(University of Sao Paulo; Lacaz Martins, Pereira Neto, Gurevich & Schoueri Advogados)/ /Leave a comment

In the last few months I have been deeply committed with the Klaus Vogel Lecture, which will be held in September 25, 2015, in the Vienna University of Economics and Business (see invitation here). I have chosen the theme “Arm’s Length beyond the Guidelines of the OECD”. My research has led to the writing of…

Transfer Pricing

(Texas A&M University Law)/ /Leave a comment

This post answers the emails received requesting further information on the US Competent Authority, including statistics, based upon my Kluwer Tax Blog post of 25 August IRS Issues New Competent Authority And Advance Pricing Agreement Procedures. The Office of the United States Competent Authority (USCA) includes both the Advance Pricing and Mutual Agreement (APMA) Program…

MAPs and APAs, Transfer Pricing

(Texas A&M University Law)/ /Leave a comment

On August 12, 2015 the IRS released two final revenue procedures impacting the U.S. transfer pricing regime.  Revenue Procedure 2015-40 concerns the protocols and procedures for requesting assistance of the U.S. competent authority (CA) and the other, Revenue Procedure 2015-41, the protocols and procedures for seeking an Advance Pricing Agreement with the IRS.[1] In 2013…

BEPS, Tax Policy, Transfer Pricing

(Matsos & Associates)/ /Leave a comment

BEPS-Project? CFC rules and transfer pricing? Treaty abuse and dispute resolution? Why bother for such complicated things? Greece has a “perfect” solution against base erosion and profit shifting through cross-border schemes: It is for this purpose that Greece has imposed since March 21st, 2015, an additional condition for the recognition of any expenses payable to…

BEPS, EU/EEA, OECD, Tax Avoidance, Tax Planning, Tax Policy, Transfer Pricing, United Nations

(CORIT advisory)/ /Leave a comment

There are a lot of opinions on multinationals and their tax practices. One conventional perception is that multinationals have a general tax advantage over their domestic competitors as their international operations allow for substantial tax management to minimize the corporate tax burden at group level. A number of tax policy projects are in process and…