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A look at main amendments brought by the Irish Finance Act 2010 is presented. The law contains transfer pricing rules that are designed to bring the Irish tax code into line with the international norm but does not apply to small and medium sized enterprises. The tax regime is also applicable only to trading transactions and to overstated expenses and understated receipts.

ARM'S-LENGTH METHODS AND ISSUES The international transfer pricing standard of most countries and virtually all international tax treaties is the arm's-length standard, defined as the price that would be negotiated [...]

In a recent Ernst Young study, (1) 85 percent transnational corporation (TNC) executives surveyed considered transfer pricing to be their most important international issue, up from 78 percent two years [...]

The development of electronic commerce can be said to be the greatest event in the economic history of mankind, next only to the Industrial Revolution. (1) The IRS says [that] [...]

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report "Transfer Pricing Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and Tax Administrations" signals important developments in OECD thinking on the application of the arms-length principle to intercompany transfers of intangible property and services. These developments lie in the potential for developing marketing intangibles separate from trademarks and trade names, the chance to adjust retroactively the terms of intangible transfers and to transfer services at cost.

Canadian law on international transfer pricing includes statutory anti-avoidance provisions, case law, Information circular 87-2, and Revenue Canada's Advance Pricing Agreement procedure. Transfer pricing laws cover non-arm's-length transactions between related parties for goods and services, a common practice given Canada's level of international commerce. Although Canadian case law on transfer pricing is inconclusive, the Advance Pricing Agreement appears to be a cost-effective route for companies facing transfer pricing situations.

In 1994, the IRS issued its final regulations under Section 482. These regulations change the position which the Service had previously taken concerning acceptable transfer-pricing methods. This article examines the new rules and illustrates their application in an international case setting. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.), Last year, the final regulations governing acceptable transfer-pricing methodologies (TPMs) were issued by the IRS. Applicable to tax years beginning after October 6, 1994 (and to all open tax years [...]

Many issues involving international tax disputes were addressed at an invitational conference on transfer pricing sponsored by the Canadian Tax Foundation. All involved agreed that there was a need for international cooperation on the issue and voiced a desire to see the establishment of some mechanism that would make it faster and more economical to resolve transfer pricing disputes. Issues discussed include safe harbor, information requirements, expense allocation, cost-sharing, intangibles and arms length accounting.

Many international business enterprises transfer tangible property between their branches, and the way their accountants determine the value of these transfers is called transfer pricing. Section 482 determines taxable income in these cases. Many businesses have been unhappy about the uncertainty of IRS rulings, so the IRS started granting advance determination rulings (ADR) on the means used to arrive at international transfer prices. Granting preapproval with ADRs should help reconcile actual methods and Section 482 rules.

The international panel sessions of the ABA Tax Section's May meetings focused on cost-sharing arrangements and nonresident alien withholding regulations, cross-border Internet sales, and bilateral advance pricing agreements. International philanthropy and tax arbitrage financial transactions were also discussed. Several panels, particularly the financial transactions and Tax Treaties Committee meetings, illustrated the difficulty in creating consistent international tax policy.

The Section 482 White Paper--A Canadian Perspective (*1) A. OVERVIEW For many observers, in Canada and other foreign countries as well as the United States, the enactment in 1986 of [...]

It is a commonly held belief that foreign owned corporations doing business in the US are not paying their fair share of taxes. Internal Revenue Code section 482 seeks to change this by giving the Secretary of Treasury more power to redetermine the amount of taxes such companies owe the US. Currently, a transfer pricing method which allows multinational corporations to doctor their books in order to allocate most of their income to a country with low tax rates may indeed be costing the US billions in tax revenue.

In March, the IRS issued revenue procedure 91-22, providing guidance on securing an "advance pricing agreement" (APA). An APA is an agreement between the taxpayer and the government designed to [...]