COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF TRANSFER PRICING LEGISLATION IN THE REGULATORY FRAMEWORK OF EU MEMBER STATES

Abstract

The article carries out a comparative analysis and assessment of the adequacy of legal regulation of transfer pricing in the EU Member States. The necessity and importance of studying foreign experience in building and improving the legal framework for transfer pricing is substantiated. The authors determine that the relevance of transfer pricing and related issues both in terms of ensuring the proper functioning of the single market and eliminating base erosion and profit shifting is confirmed by the existence of a special advisory body under the European Commission - the Joint Transfer Pricing Forum (JTPF), which advises the European Commission on transfer pricing taxation. The article identifies the main aspects of transfer pricing regulation in the EU Member States with a view to a detailed analysis of the regulatory framework. The criteria of related parties in the EU transfer pricing legislation are studied. It is found that a common feature in the definition of related parties is the direct or indirect influence of one person on another. The author examines and compares the grounds for conducting an audit in the EU transfer pricing legislation and finds that in the vast majority of EU Member States there is a so-called "self-assessment" regime for companies, according to which the taxpayer must ensure compliance with the transfer pricing rules; the risk factors that are relevant for conducting an audit of transfer pricing transactions are legally defined; common factors for the sample of countries studied are: unprofitability of a group of companies against the background of profitability of other entities. It is concluded that the studied foreign experience of regulatory and legal regulation of transfer pricing transactions on the example of individual EU Member States has shown a high level of unification of legislation in the field of transfer pricing, with minor differences in the provisions of the national legal framework; the differences are mainly in the systematic nature of determining the criteria of relatedness of parties in transfer pricing transactions and the grounds for conducting audit procedures on such transactions.