Risks are of critical importance in the context of business restructurings. Usually, in the open market, the assumption of risk associated with a commercial opportunity affects the profit potential of that opportunity, and the allocation of risk assumed between the parties to the arrangement affects how profits or losses resulting from the transaction are allocated through the arm’s length pricing of the transaction. Business restructurings often result in local operations being converted into low risk operations (e.g. “low risk distributors”, or “low risk contract manufacturers”) and being remunerated with a relatively low (but generally stable) return on the grounds that the economically significant risks are assumed by another party to which the profits or losses associated with those risks are allocated. For this reason, an examination of the allocation of risks between associated enterprises before and after the restructuring is an essential part of the functional analysis. Such analysis should allow tax administrations to assess the transfer of the economically significant risks of the business that is restructured and the consequences of that transfer for the application of the arm’s length principle to the restructuring itself and to the post-restructuring transactions.
TPG2022 Chapter IX paragraph 9.19
Posted on | By OECD
Category: OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines (2022), TPG2022 Chapter IX: Transfer Pricing Aspects of Business Restructurings | Tag: Assumption of risk, Business restructuring, Conversion of full-fledged distributors, Delineation of Business Restructurings, Limited Risk Distributors (LRD), Risk return trade off
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