Transfer Pricing in Argentina

The legal framework

Argentina's transfer pricing regime is statutory. The arm's length standard sits in article 17 of the Income Tax Law (Ley 20.628, texto ordenado 2019), with article 16 on permanent establishments, article 18 on related parties and articles 19 and 20 on non-cooperative and low or no-tax jurisdictions. The implementing regulation is the Annex to Decree 862/2019, substantially rewritten by Decree 767/2025; compliance mechanics come from General Resolution 4717/2020 as amended by RG 5798/2025, with RG 5010/2021 on the simplified regime and RG 4130-E/2017 on country-by-country reporting. The administering body is ARCA, which absorbed AFIP's functions in 2024.

Two structural features shape every engagement. The regime is exclusively cross-border, so intra-Argentine dealings raise no article 17 exposure. And the net is wider than relatedness: dealings with persons in non-cooperative or low or no-tax jurisdictions are deemed not to be arm's length, connected or not. The relatedness test is itself open-ended, catching direction, control or common control exercised through capital, decision-making power or functional influence of any kind, and article 14 of the decree adds fourteen deemed scenarios, from shared directors and exclusive distribution rights to a counterparty on whom the Argentine entity's continuity depends.

The OECD Guidelines are not incorporated by reference and have no binding force; they are persuasive material only. The Tribunal Fiscal de la Nación has reasoned from them, notably in BASF Argentina, requiring results segmented by function and product rather than aggregated. Argentina also declines the Authorised OECD Approach: all twenty-two treaties in force use pre-2010 article 7.

Methods, comparables and benchmarking

Article 17 prescribes the five familiar methods, and the decree adds a residual category of other methods. There is no hierarchy: the most appropriate method is judged on fit with the commercial structure, information available, comparability achievable and adjustments needed. Other methods are open only where a transaction's features defeat valuation under the five. Argentina has no hard-to-value intangibles regime and does not permit cost contribution arrangements at all.

The one hard rule is commodities. CUP is deemed most appropriate for quoted goods, referenced to comparable transactions or to published indexes and market values. Registration is a general duty, not an anti-intermediary rule: every export of a quoted commodity, with related or independent parties and whether or not an intermediary participates, must have its export declaration registered electronically within sixty days of shipment, carrying twelve prescribed data points. An export that misses those requirements counts as unregistered, and Argentine-source income is then computed on the quotation at the loading date. Decree 767/2025 widened the definition of quoted goods and empowered ARCA to publish minimum reference prices by tariff position.

Benchmarking is tightly specified. The comparability analysis must be performed on the Argentine party: there is no foreign tested-party exception, and the only departure is the profit split method, under which every related party to the transaction is analysed. Where two or more comparables exist, the interquartile range and median are mandatory, article 29 of RG 4717/2020 prescribing the computation in eight steps including decimal interpolation, and out-of-range results are adjusted to the median rather than the nearer quartile. There is no local comparables requirement, though a geographic screen ranking Argentine comparables first remains customary. Loss-makers must be excluded absent detailed objective justification, and ARCA's proposed replacement resolution would bar them outright. The Supreme Court's 2024 Volkswagen judgment shows the discipline: a gain on the waiver of a related-party loan could not be recharacterised as operating income to lift the tested margin.

Documentation: what ARCA expects

Argentina requires the full three-tier suite plus a domestic information return, and the thresholds changed dramatically for fiscal years closing on or after 31 October 2025. The local file, the Estudio de Precios de Transferencia, is required where transactions with foreign related parties or tainted-jurisdiction counterparties exceed ARS 150 million in aggregate or ARS 15 million individually. Content follows Annex I of RG 4717/2020: group structure, functional analysis, the comparables search, adjustments, the arithmetic behind the margins and the economic case for the method. It must be certified by an independent accountant or economist, authenticated by the Professional Council of Economic Sciences, and filed with form F. 4501.

The master file is due only where prior-year consolidated group revenue exceeded ARS 100 billion and the local file thresholds are also met; RG 5798/2025 introduced form F. 2673 and a ratification note letting a taxpayer whose information is unchanged confirm the previous filing. Country-by-country reporting follows the EUR 750 million standard: notification on F. 8096 within three months of the parent's year end, the report on F. 8097 within twelve. The annual international operations return, F. 2668, is triggered by the local file thresholds or by independent-party imports and exports above ARS 500 million; a taxpayer that filed with movements in either of the two preceding years must keep filing, marked sin movimientos, until two consecutive nil returns close the obligation.

Deadlines run from fiscal year end: the study and F. 2668 in the sixth month, the master file in the twelfth, the day fixed by the last digit of the CUIT. Filings are in Spanish, and foreign-language material must be accompanied by a translation from a traductor público nacional whose handwritten signature is certified by the Argentine body where the translator is registered; no legalisation or apostille is called for. Lower-risk taxpayers in the RG 5010/2021 band, now ARS 500 million to ARS 3,000 million of revenue, may replace both the study and F. 2668 with form F. 2672, though that regime is closed to master file filers and CbC-reporting groups.

Audits, penalties and the enforcement climate

The cost of getting this wrong rose by an order of magnitude on 2 January 2026, when Ley 27.799 took effect. Failure to file the international operations return now carries a base fine of ARS 11 million, rising to ARS 22 million where the filer is a company, trust, association or entity constituted in Argentina, or an Argentine permanent establishment belonging to a person domiciled or constituted abroad; the lower tier is the residual case for individuals and sole proprietorships. The previous figures were ARS 10,000 and ARS 20,000. Formal-duty breaches under article 39 of Ley 11.683 run from ARS 150,000 to ARS 2.5 million. Country-by-country failures are heavier: ARS 6 million to ARS 15 million for parent-identification failures, ARS 45 million to ARS 67.5 million for a missing or seriously inconsistent F. 8097.

The substantive exposure is worse. Article 45 imposes a fine of 100 per cent of the tax omitted, doubling to 200 per cent where the omission arises from dealings between Argentine and foreign persons, which is to say in every transfer pricing adjustment; repeat offences reach 300 per cent. Fraud under article 46 carries two to six times the tax evaded. There is no documentation-based penalty protection: a compliant study is evidence, not a shield. The defence is the error excusable carve-out in article 45, which the Tax Court has applied where conduct flows from genuinely complex rules.

Ley 27.799 also rewrote limitation. Five years remains the baseline and ten for the unregistered, but three years now applies to those who filed on time, paid what was due and face no significant discrepancy: a variance of at least 15 per cent, an amount above ARS 100 million, or fraudulent documentation. Any material adjustment clears that bar. ARCA's stated direction is fewer and larger filers, digital channels, and attention on agri-export chains, large-group intangibles and intra-group financing.

Dispute resolution and advance certainty

Advance certainty is the weakest part of the system. There is no operative advance pricing agreement programme. The determinación conjunta de precios de operaciones internacionales concept emerged from the Ley 27.430 reform, but the implementing regulation was never issued, so there are no APA types, fees, tenure or rollback rules. Treat Argentina as an APA-free jurisdiction, while noting that operationalising the regime is one of ARCA's declared projects.

What exists is the binding consultation regime under RG 4497/2019. The request must be lodged before the taxable event or within the period for declaring it, the authority must answer within ninety days, and the answer binds both sides provided the stated facts hold. Narrow, but for a discrete methodological question it is the only unilateral certainty available. Argentina joined ICAP in 2022 and has taken part in three cases, without local regulations.

Mutual agreement procedure runs off article 25 of each treaty. The competent authority is not ARCA but the Secretaría de Hacienda within the Ministry of Economy, at Hipólito Yrigoyen 250, office 903, Buenos Aires, a point secondary profiles frequently get wrong. Requests must be made within three years of notification of the measure, or the treaty time limit if different, and no procedural MAP regulation has yet been approved. Unilateral downward corresponding adjustments are prohibited, so MAP is in practice the route to relief from economic double taxation — with the caveat that the treaties with Bolivia, Brazil, Germany, France, Italy and Switzerland contain no Article 9(2) obligation on the competent authority to make a corresponding adjustment, a gap the MLI is expected to close. Domestically, adjustments arrive by determinación de oficio, and article 76 of Ley 11.683 gives fifteen days to elect between reconsideration by ARCA and appeal to the Tribunal Fiscal de la Nación, from which the route runs to the federal appeals court and ultimately the Supreme Court.

Pillar Two and what changes in 2026

Argentina has not enacted the GloBE rules. There is no income inclusion rule, no undertaxed profits rule and no qualified domestic minimum top-up tax; local commentary attributes the reluctance partly to concern that a 15 per cent floor would neutralise domestic incentives. Model Argentina as a jurisdiction where top-up tax, if any, is collected elsewhere. Amount B sits in a similar posture: Argentina will respect outcomes applied by covered jurisdictions, but has not enacted the simplified and streamlined approach itself and will not respect its application by a non-covered jurisdiction. Distributors are priced under the ordinary article 17 regime.

The real 2026 changes are procedural. The BEPS Multilateral Instrument entered into force for Argentina on 1 January 2026, upgrading dispute resolution in matched covered treaties and expected to supply the missing Article 9(2) corresponding-adjustment obligation in several older treaties; positions on articles 16 and 17 and on Part VI arbitration should be checked against the OECD matching database. Decree 767/2025 and RG 5798/2025 reset every peso threshold for years closing on or after 31 October 2025. And ARCA has a draft resolution out for consultation that would abrogate RG 4717, 4733, 4759 and 5010 and consolidate the regime into one instrument; it was unpublished as at August 2026, so its new elements, the outright bar on loss-making comparables, codified foreign tested-party conditions, the sampling prohibition, the MAP-only downward adjustment exception and the Annex V risk questionnaire, remain proposals.

How practitioners should respond

Start with the threshold arithmetic, because much of the filing population has just fallen out of the regime. Recalculate every entity against the ARS 150 million and ARS 15 million study triggers, the ARS 500 million import-export trigger and the ARS 100 billion master file trigger, remembering they bite only for years closing on or after 31 October 2025. Then check the sin movimientos trap: filing history, not current size, determines whether an F. 2668 is still owed.

Second, treat benchmarking as the litigation risk it is. The interquartile range is mandatory, the Argentine entity is the tested party in everything but a profit split, loss-makers need documented justification now and may be barred soon, and Volkswagen shows the Supreme Court will police the composition of the operating margin. Segment by function and product; do not aggregate for convenience.

Third, build the file for the penalty argument, not just the filing. With the omission fine doubled for cross-border adjustments and no statutory documentation defence, the practical protection is a study good enough to support error excusable: contemporaneous reasoning, real comparability adjustments, a documented method selection rather than a template.

Finally, keep the commodity chain under separate review. Electronic registration of every quoted-commodity export declaration within sixty days of shipment, the loading-date fallback where that is missed, and ARCA's power to set minimum reference prices by tariff position make agri-export pricing the most exposed area in the regime.