Circular 323 clarifies the key points of statistic and analysis on transfer pricing contemporaneous documentation

Posted by Jiang Diwei on July 30, 2010 under China Tax | Be the First to Comment

Guoshuihan [2010] No. 323 explicitly stipulates, tax authorities should compile statistics and analyze enterprises’ transfer pricing contemporaneous documentation preparing situations in their administrative regions. The circular emphasizes the key point from macro and micro-perspective when tax authorities execute the above mentioned task.

From macroscopical on look, tax authorities should explain what kind of sampling method they adopted; in whole sampled enterprises the respective percentage of those enterprises whose related party transactions amount regard to purchase/sale exceeding CNY 200,000,000 and other related party transactions amount over CNY 40,000,000; the respective percentage of enterprises in tracing managing period, with thin capital, with cost sharing agreement, and bearing loss with limited functions and risks. Besides, tax authorities should gather statistics on the enterprises’ various approaches to prepare contemporaneous documentation, mainly inspecting whether they relied on the aid of intermediary organ and which organs were entrusted. In particular, tax authorities should clarify the percentage on preparing contemporaneous documentation of Big Four, domestic firms, foreign firms and enterprises themselves respectively.

From micro-perspectives, according to five detailed requirements on contemporaneous documentation preparing in the special tax adjustment implementation regulation, tax authorities should evaluate the first four aspects from three ranks, in particularly as detailed description, incomplete information and no data; For the fifth aspect, the selection and using of transfer pricing methods, should be gathered statistics from the percentage of five frequently-used transfer pricing methods.

In concrete practice, tax authorities should evaluate the sampled enterprises’ contemporaneous documentation preparing situations from the four levels, including good, ordinary, poor and very poor. They also compile statistics in different ways on preparing contemporaneous documentation for enterprises in each level. Combined with certain analysis in macro-on look part, tax authorities can assess the quality of tax services by intermediary organs, as so to provide guidance for those enterprises who are intent to trust an intermediary organs when prepare contemporaneous documentation.