OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines 2022

The OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and Tax Administrations (OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines) provide orientation when applying the arm’s length principle. On 20 January 2022, the OECD published a new version of these Transfer Pricing Guidelines. It is available in English and French on the OECD website.

The OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines 2022 replace the 2017 version. On the level of content, the changes are mostly limited to the integration into the OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines of the following guidance, which was previously contained in separately published reports:

• the Transfer Pricing Guidance on Financial Transactions published on 11 February 2020 (Actions 4, 8-10); as well as
• the Revised Guidance on the Application of the Transactional Profit Split Method published on 21 June 2018 (BEPS Action 10).

In addition, the Annex now incorporates the Guidance for Tax Administrations on the Application of the Approach to Hard-to-Value Intangibles (BEPS Action 8).

Otherwise, the changes were either minor editorial changes for linguistic consistency or renumbering of items.

Conclusion and outlook

The new OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines 2022 bring no significant changes in terms of content. As the Austrian tax authorities follow a dynamic interpretation, it should be anticipated that the Guidelines will be referred to in ongoing tax audits.

Author: Stana Matejic