Submission on Amendments to Chapter IX: Business Restructurings

The BMG has made a Submission to the OECD Consultation on its proposed revisions to Chapter IX of its Transfer Pricing Guidelines, on Business Restructurings.

Summary

Chapter IX was introduced into the OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines (TPGs) in 2010 to help deal with the consequences of the spread since the 1990s of corporate restructurings by multinational enterprises (MNEs) essentially aimed at tax avoidance, typically involving transfers of rights to intangibles, redesignation of the responsibilities or functions of affiliates, and notional reassignments of risk-bearing. This draft rewrites the chapter to bring it into line with the other changes to the TPGs resulting from the BEPS project.

Our comments suggest ways in which the draft should be revised to make its purpose clearer, with additional coverage of restructurings that are only contractual in nature or that involve insubstantial movements of assets, people, and risks. It should state that the burden of proof is on the taxpayer to establish the validity and substantive nature of any stated business reasons behind any business restructuring, and should bring out more clearly the applicability of the profit split method.