Revised Guidance on Profit Splits

The BMG has made a Submission to the OECD Consultation on its draft revisions to the Transfer Pricing Guidelines concern the Profit Split Method.

General Remarks and Summary

We applaud the continued interest of the OECD and Working Party 6 in its work to make the profit-split approach a more viable and important tool in intercompany pricing.

In this submission we propose the development and use of defined allocation keys and weights to apply the profit-split method to actual profits of common business models (see Appendix). In our comments to the specific questions we point out that the examples in the discussion draft assume, without explicitly saying it, that the various business units of a multinational enterprise (MNE) are normally independently managed, albeit with common ownership and some top-level management over policy and direction. In contrast to this assumption, we believe that most MNEs operate as centrally-managed unitary businesses performing core functions and using intangible property in multiple countries. We therefore suggest that it is appropriate to apply the profit-split method to actual profits in these cases. Nevertheless, if Working Party 6 takes a different view, due to their belief that some level of integrated risk sharing is required for application to actual profits, the profit-split method with defined allocation keys and weights could be applied to anticipated gross profits or other measure appropriate for the specific business model. Whether our recommended approach or this alternative is chosen and inserted into the Guidelines, it would greatly simplify things for taxpayers and tax authorities alike.