United Kingdom: New HMRC guidance on common risks in transfer pricing

In brief

HMRC has published new guidelines for UK businesses within the scope of UK transfer pricing rules. 

The new guidelines (which can be found here) are intended to be read alongside HMRC’s transfer pricing guidance in its International Manual (from INTM410000 to INTM480000) and are predominantly aimed at helping businesses reduce uncertainty in their transfer pricing compliance approaches by:

  • Providing HMRC’s expectations of the role the UK business should perform in managing transfer pricing compliance risk.
  • Highlighting common risk areas to watch out for, or for which greater scrutiny is recommended, together with best practice approaches to assist UK businesses.
  • Suggesting useful forms of real time information and records to be retained.
  • Raising awareness amongst specialists of common risks in scoping, preparation, analysis and retention of transfer pricing documentation and best practice.
  • Highlighting common indicators of risk in designing and selecting transfer pricing policies.

Contents

In more detail 

The new guidelines are presented in three parts - with Parts 2 and 3 aimed at in-house or advisory transfer pricing specialists and UK compliance risk leaders (such as UK tax compliance managers, UK finance directors, UK finance controllers, Senior Accounting Officers (SAOs) and UK environmental, social and governance (ESG) leads).  

The three parts of HMRC’s new guidance cover:

  1. Managing compliance risk for UK businesses. This is aimed at those managing UK transfer pricing risk to help managing transfer pricing compliance throughout the annual lifecycle including by:
  • Planning and scoping transfer pricing compliance work.
  • Considering implementation and monitoring checks.
  • Enabling transfer pricing analysis and documentation to prepare master and local files or to evidence the arm’s length return.
  1. Common compliance risks. This is aimed at specialists and includes: 
  • Indicators of higher risk through the compliance process.
  • HMRC recommendations for best practice compliance approaches considering common issues with functional analysis and comparability analysis, as well as common risks in calculations and adjustments.
  • How to document the functional analysis.
  1. Indicators of transfer pricing policy design risk. This is also aimed at specialists and covers common risk indicators in transfer pricing design and implementation.  Specific guidance is provided in the areas listed below:
  • Intangible assets ownership and exploitation.
  • Above market intra-group services.
  • Transfer pricing target margin models.
  • Cost based reward for services.
  • Sales based reward for services.
  • Franchise fees and similar single fee arrangements.

There is also an annex which provides examples of what HMRC consider to be helpful supporting records and information.

Please contact us, or your regular Baker McKenzie contact, should you have any questions or want to discuss further.


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