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In April, the IRS released a practice unit on country-by-country (or “CbC”) reporting. The purpose of the document is twofold: (i) describe the background of CbC reporting and (ii) provide guidance to IRS personnel on the use of CbC reports “in the IRS high-level transfer pricing risk assessment process.” Although the practice unit repeatedly stresses that the IRS will not audit CbC reports, there is potentially less to this claim than meets the eye.
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Continue Reading Less than Meets the Eye: The IRS Practice Unit on CbC Reports

In ancient Rome, a college of “augurs” would predict the future by observing the flight patterns of birds, examining the entrails of animal sacrifices, or interpreting natural phenomena. While perhaps less colorful, our method of divination will hopefully be a little more precise. To develop this blog post, we have consulted our own augurs and have summarized all our predictions for transfer pricing developments in the coming year.
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Continue Reading Looking Forward: Predictions for 2022

On September 9, 2021, the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) issued its Priority Guidance Plan for 2021-2022. The Priority Guidance Plan gives the public a sense of what regulations and other guidance the Treasury Department and the IRS might develop over the following 12 months. Among dozens of other pending and potential guidance projects, the Priority Guidance Plan lists the following two new potential section 482 regulations projects:

  • Regulations under §482 clarifying the effects of group membership (e.g., passive association) in determining arm’s length pricing, including specifically with respect to financial transactions.
  • Regulations under §482 further clarifying certain aspects of the arm’s length standard, including (1) coordination of the best method rule with guidance on specified methods for different categories of transactions, (2) discretion to determine the allocation of risk based on the facts and circumstances of transactions and arrangements, and (3) periodic adjustments.

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Continue Reading Priority Guidance Plan Portends New Transfer Pricing Guidance

Federal Tax Court

A recent Tax Notes article analyzes the “standard of review” that the Tax Court will apply to the IRS’s transfer pricing adjustments. In transfer pricing cases, the Tax Court determines whether the IRS has abused its discretion by proposing an adjustment that is “arbitrary, capricious, or unreasonable.” Although courts often describe this standard as a…

Many taxpayers are familiar with information document requests where taxpayers are notified that taxing authorities are inquiring into certain transactions based on their receipt of the request. But today, many types of foreign tax information exchanges occur without the taxpayer’s knowledge. Moreover, tax administrations around the world are expanding tax information exchange programs. For example, on May 19, 2021, the European Union (“EU”) approved a measure to spend an additional € 270 million to improve national information exchange programs with a particular emphasis on upgrading information technology systems and financing joint audits.

Taxpayers should: 1) refresh themselves on the major types of tax information exchanges, 2) know how that information is used, and 3) be prepared that anything they provide to one tax administration could likely end up in the hands of another.
Continue Reading No Secrets are Safe in an Era of Global Tax Information Exchange

In the dawn years of transfer pricing, when the bulk of international trade focused on tangible goods, relatively little attention was devoted to the analysis of transactions involving services.  The 1968 U.S. Treasury Regulations governing intercompany services focused on the allocation and apportionment of costs with respect to services undertaken for the benefit of the related parties, roughly in line with the current Services Cost Method, and provided a high level discussion of the services that were an integral part of the business activity of a member of a controlled group without elaborating on the methods to be used to test compliance with the arm’s length standard (Section 1.482-2(b) (1968)).  In the 1995 Transfer Pricing Guidelines from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (“OECD”), the analysis of pricing of intracompany services occupied a mere 15 pages.  In the mid-2000s, there was a renewed focus on the pricing of intercompany services.  First to the stage were the U.S. Treasury Regulations in Section 1.482-9 promulgated in August of 2009, followed by several International Practice Units in 2014 through 2017, and then by the OECD with a revised Chapter VII in the 2017 OECD Guidelines.  The increased attention is not surprising:  over the last 20 years, from 1999 to 2019, the growth of trade in services far outpaced that of tangible goods (215% vs 137% for exports and 199% vs 143% for imports), with particularly robust performance in maintenance and repair, financial, and business services.
Continue Reading Intercompany Services: The Next Frontier of Transfer Pricing Disputes

Assume the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) is auditing your company’s transfer pricing. The administrative process is starting to break down, and it looks as if the IRS might assert a sizeable income adjustment. What is your duty to save documents for a potential upcoming court case?
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Continue Reading Document Preservation for Transfer Pricing Litigation: What You Need to Know

The headline news about the U.S. Tax Court’s decision on the value of Michael Jackson’s estate might have been a shock to some – or, perhaps, to many. The King of Pop’s inflation-adjusted earnings since his death in 2009, according to the Forbes magazine, were $2.1 billion. His annual earnings in 2016 were $825 million, the highest single-year payday ever recorded by a front-of-camera celebrity. And yet his image and likeness at the time of his death was valued at a meager $4 million by the U.S. Tax Court.
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Continue Reading What Are You Worth?

Skyline Paris with Eiffel Tower and French flag

In a decision dated December 11, 2020 (Value Click Case), the French Administrative Supreme Court overturned a Paris Court of Appeal decision dated March 1, 2018, and concluded that the French affiliate of the group (“French Co”) should be considered as the dependent agent of the Irish affiliate company (“Irish Co”) in France for permanent establishment (“PE”) purposes. The decision is a significant reversal of prior court cases, such as the Google decision dated April 25, 2019, and it may lead to the unilateral application by France of an expansive interpretation of the definition of PEs under Article 12 of the MLI adopted with no reservation by France.
Continue Reading Landmark Decision in France Regarding PE of Digital Company

Federal Tax Court

The parties recently completed briefing on an IRS motion for partial summary judgment in Western Digital Corporation v. Commissioner. The motion asks the US Tax Court to hold that a safe harbor in the Section 482 regulations is not relevant to whether intercompany receivable terms are “ordinary and necessary” under a provision in Subpart F. In our view, the motion is an unusual attempt to bar the taxpayer from making a well-founded legal argument in a case that is over a year away from trial.
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Continue Reading IRS Seeks to Bar Transfer Pricing Argument in Western Digital