The Transfer Pricing documentation landscape is continuously evolving, whereby recently, there has been an increasing tendency of various countries updating and strengthening their transfer pricing documentation requirements. Considering these changes, it is important for internationally active groups to follow up on this fast-moving landscape and to make sure that no crucial deadline is missed.

On February 15^th, the Belgian accounting standards boards (Comissie voor Boekhoudkundige normen – hereafter “CBN”) published additional guidance with respect to mergers and demergers of companies having negative net asset values. We note that advices approved and published by the CBN merely contain guidance and is not legally binding.

Following our previous newsflashes regarding the updated transfer pricing country profiles published by the OECD (first batch in August 2021, second batch in December 2021), the OECD has released a third batch of updated and new transfer pricing profiles for 28 countries on 28 February 2022. This brings the total number of countries covered to 91. The updates include, in line with the first and second batches, two new sections that cover the transfer pricing treatment of financial transactions and the application of the Authorised OECD Approach (AOA) to attribute profits to permanent establishments.

As the yearly transfer pricing audit wave was recently released by the Belgian tax authorities, in which Belgian taxpayers receive a (mostly) standardized, extensive request for information, it is a good moment to have a look at some recent developments as well as certain facts and figures linked to transfer pricing audits.

The OECD published today the successor of the July 2017 edition of the Transfer Pricing Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and Tax Administrations (“OECD TP Guidelines”). This ’January 2022’ edition of the OECD TP Guidelines incorporates:

Further to our previous newsflash regarding the updated transfer pricing country profiles published by the OECD in August 2021, the OECD has released a second batch of updated and new transfer pricing country profiles for 21 countries on 13 December 2021. This brings the total number of countries covered to 63. The updates include, in line with the first batch, two new sections that cover the transfer pricing treatment of financial transactions and the application of the Authorised OECD Approach (AOA) to attribute profits to permanent establishments. The OECD indicated that more updates to the transfer pricing country profiles are expected in the first half of 2022. We will keep you posted on updates.

Did you or your company recently have to deal with a transfer pricing audit? If not, there is a good chance you will be faced with one soon. The number of transfer pricing audits (TP audits) has increased in recent years and the Special Tax Inspectors (BBI/ISI), like real “fraud hunters”, are paying more and more attention to this matter.

On 11 November 2021, the European Parliament approved the implementation of what is commonly referred to as the public country-by-country reporting (CbCR) Directive.¹ This formal approval of the European Parliament came after the recent publication of the position of the European Council.

The Service for Advance Decisions (SAD) indicated, in line with previous years, that prefiling requests or requests that are not preceded by a prefiling, concerning transfer pricing or the innovation income deduction and that relate to the calendar year 2021 (fiscal year 2022), must be filed by 31 January 2022 at the latest.

In a recently published decision dd. 8 June 2021 of the Court of Appeal of Ghent relating to transfer pricing (nr. 2016/AR/455), the Court decided in favor of the taxpayer. The case originated from an audit initiated by the Special Investigation Squad (BBI/ISI) in 2009.