The National Association for Business Economics (NABE) held its annual Transfer Pricing Symposium July 18-20 in Washington, D.C. ktMINE’s Brett Schoell, Market Lead of Transfer Pricing & BEPS, and Michael Taylor, Chief Technology Officer, attended the event, where ktMINE was a Gold sponsor.
Following recent high profile transfer pricing court cases and updates to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Base Erosion Profit Shifting (BEPS) guidelines, it is no surprise this was a lively event. With a packed agenda of timely and educational topics, here are a few key takeaways from various sessions:
- While it is necessary to utilize the best method when performing Transfer Pricing there has been a favoritism in the courts towards using the CUT/CUP method. This includes using inexact CUT/CUPs and making any needed adjustments.
- The Medtronic and Amazon cases have proven that actual hard data and evidence is needed to substantiate claims as opposed to unsupported profit splits.
- Developing countries insist that they need local or regional comparables despite the fact that most data is global in nature and often doesn’t focus on territory. It is the OECD’s responsibility to communicate to these countries that the functions of the agreements are more valuable than arbitrary information such as territory.
- A big misplaced issue amongst developing countries is the perceived lack of affordable databases to find comparable data.
- Without a central location, locating internal comparables can be a difficult task
