TPG2022 Chapter IX paragraph 9.67

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Category: OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines (2022), TPG2022 Chapter IX: Transfer Pricing Aspects of Business Restructurings | Tag: , , , , , ,
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Tax administrations have expressed concerns about cases they have observed in practice where an entity voluntarily terminates a contract that provided benefits to it, in order to allow a foreign associated enterprise to enter into a similar contract and benefit from the profit potential attached to it. For instance, assume that company A has valuable long-term contracts with independent customers that carry significant profit potential for A. Assume that at a certain point in time, A voluntarily terminates its contracts with its customers under circumstances where the latter are legally or commercially obligated to enter into similar arrangements with company B, a foreign entity that belongs to the same MNE group as A. As a consequence, the contractual rights and attached profit potential that used to lie with A now lie with B. If the factual situation is that B could only enter into the contracts with the customers subject to A’s surrendering its own contractual rights to its benefit, and that A only terminated its contracts with its customers knowing that the latter were legally or commercially obligated to conclude similar arrangements with B, this in substance would consist in a tri-partite transaction and it may amount to a transfer of valuable contractual rights from A to B that may have to be remunerated at arm’s length, depending on the value of the rights surrendered by A from the perspectives of both A and B.

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