On September 28, 2022, the OECD published the Bilateral Advance Pricing Arrangement (“BAPA”) Manual. The manual proposes best practices for jurisdictions to streamline, expedite and improve BAPA processes based on member surveys. Most notably, the BAPA manual encourages jurisdictions to conclude BAPAs within 30 months and to work to further reduce completion times to 24 months or less.
Continue Reading Prepare for Warp Speed: New Goal to Conclude APAs is 24–30 Months
On March 22, 2022, the Internal Revenue Service’s Advance Pricing and Mutual Agreement Program (“APMA”) released its 2021 Announcement and Report Concerning Advance Pricing Agreements (“2021 Annual Report”). The 2021 Annual Report shows that multinationals’ demand for advance pricing agreements (“APAs”) is high and increasing, with APMA receiving 145 APA applications in 2021, a 20% increase from 2020. The report similarly shows that APMA made steady progress in concluding APAs during 2021 with 124 completions, with notable highlights including a substantial increase in completions of bilateral APAs with Germany and a decrease in completions of bilateral APAs with India.
Continue Reading APMA’s 2021 APA Annual Report Shows High Demand for APAs by Multinationals and Steady Progress by APMA in Concluding Cases
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.
Continue Reading Looking Forward: Predictions for 2022
In February 2021, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (“OECD”) issued a handbook linked with the official roll-out of its International Compliance Assurance Programme (“ICAP”). ICAP was first introduced as a pilot in January 2018 (“ICAP 1.0”) as a voluntary program where MNE groups may receive “comfort and assurance” from multiple tax administrations as to the veracity of the MNE group’s transfer pricing allocations and numerous types of international transactions. While some notable countries did not participate in ICAP 1.0 (for example, Germany), the pilot program received positive reviews by a number of MNE groups. In March 2020, the OECD enhanced the pilot program (“ICAP 2.0”) to encourage more countries to join. On March 22, 2021, the OECD announced an initial list of twenty countries that are participating in the official program.[1]
Continue Reading ICAP, a New Tool in the Multiverse of Multinational Tax Dispute Management