The Library
Uncertainty in transfer pricing tax rules : the role of APAs
Tools
Rogers, Helen, Ph.D. (2009) Uncertainty in transfer pricing tax rules : the role of APAs. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
Research output not available from this repository.
Request-a-Copy directly from author or use local Library Get it For Me service.
Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b2491816~S15
Abstract
Transfer pricing is an important issue for transnational enterprises (TNEs)
seeking to comply with the different, inconsistent, tax rules of different nation
states. The objective of this research is to examine the emergence of transfer
pricing practice after the introduction of new tax rules in the US and the UK
from the mid-1990s onwards and the issuing of the transnational OECD Transfer
Pricing Guidelines in 1995. These rules require the use of the arm’s length
principle, which is very broad, giving rise to considerable uncertainty as to how
it should be interpreted, complied with and applied. These rules also include
provision for Advance Pricing Agreements (APAs). An APA is a mechanism to
provide certainty in advance of the appropriate application of the general arm’s
length principle so that the relevant transfer prices will not be challenged by the
tax authorities. As part of this research the APA procedure was focussed, on
seeking to gain an insight into the operation of the relatively new APA process
between the UK and US. The objective of this research is to gain a deeper
understanding of this practice and consider how practice is helping to construct a
common understanding of the rules, and vice versa.
This research makes a contribution to the current literature by obtaining and
analysing rich interview data from a novel combination of interviewees: elite
individuals working in different organisations and different nations in the field of
transfer pricing. Through this empirical work an insight is gained into the
developing common understanding and practice that supplements the written
rules. Building on literature that recognises the indeterminacy and ambiguity of
the law and the way in which law and compliance is socially constructed,
elements of the elite’s common understanding and some of the ways in which
this then evolves into accepted practice are analysed, with particular reference to
the APA process. The interview data indicates that in practice there is a high
level of discretion, the extent of which cannot be discerned from the written rules
and agreements. However, the written rules act as a form of constraint, so that
this discretion is not unfettered.
Also, there is a further theoretical contribution from this thesis. In addition to
research on the indeterminacy of law, in seeking to understand the transfer
pricing elite, theories of the professions and epistemic communities are drawn
on. The application of these different theories concomitantly is new in the
transfer pricing literature. The elite is identified as operating as an epistemic,
trans-professional transnational community. Abbott’s (1988) theory of
professions, with its emphasis on the importance of abstract knowledge, such as
ambiguous transfer pricing rules, and control of that knowledge system, is
extended, by identifying and analysing the use this epistemic community makes
of control of the outputs of the knowledge system: privileged, bespoke
agreements.
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor | ||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Transfer pricing -- Taxation -- Great Britain, Transfer pricing -- Taxation -- United States | ||||
Official Date: | October 2009 | ||||
Dates: |
|
||||
Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
Theses Department: | Warwick Business School | ||||
Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Oats, Lynne ; Lamb, Margaret (Margaret Anne) ; Ahrens, Thomas | ||||
Extent: | 344 leaves | ||||
Language: | eng |
Request changes or add full text files to a record
Repository staff actions (login required)
View Item |