Transfer Pricing in Bolivia

The SIN operates under Ley 2166 and DS 26462 and issues Resoluciones Normativas de Directorio under art. 64 of Ley 2492, which lets it regulate but not enlarge the tax. Policy sits with the Ministerio de Economía y Finanzas Públicas, which hosts the Comité Técnico de Precios de Transferencia; appeals go to the Autoridad de Impugnación Tributaria.

No statutory amendment since 2014; the whole regime is self-contained domestic law. RND 10-0008-15 remains in force — only its art. 8 has been amended (April 2026).

Art. 45 bis lets the SIN adjust or revalue where the agreed value, whatever legal form the parties adopt, does not reflect economic reality or produces lower Bolivian tax. Art. 45 also requires related companies to keep separate accounts so the Bolivian-source result can be isolated.

Participation in direction, control, administration or capital in either direction; any dealing with a person in a low- or nil-tax jurisdiction; branch/head office and sister-branch dealings; and dealings between Bolivian and foreign companies whose owners, directors or senior staff are related within the fourth degree of consanguinity or second of affinity. New triggers can be added only by Supreme Decree after CTPT evaluation. Because all six triggers are cross-border, Bolivian-to-Bolivian dealings point to being out of scope, but DS 2227 art. 3.II tells related companies established in the country to transact at market prices. That text is qualified by reference to art. 2, and no SIN guidance or published decision resolves the point.

Any dealing with a listed jurisdiction is automatically a related-party transaction under DS 2227 art. 2.I.3, pulling the counterparty into Form 601 and the study. It no longer extends the assessment window: Ley 1733 of 27/05/2026 replaced Ley 2492 art. 59 and deleted the low- or nil-tax ground, leaving a two-year extension only for failure to register or registering in the wrong tax regime. Fiscal years ending to 30 June 2026 use the 2019 annex to RND 101900000002; years ending 30 September 2026 onward use the new list. Listed names include Bahamas, Belize, Bermuda, BVI, Cayman, Cyprus, Gibraltar, Hong Kong, Jersey, Liechtenstein, Macao, Samoa and Seychelles — Panama does not appear anywhere in the annex.

No Bolivian instrument incorporates the Guidelines, and no OECD Transfer Pricing Country Profile has ever been published for Bolivia. The SIN's Form 601 guide quotes OECD Model art. 9 only 'referencialmente', directing taxpayers to Ley 843 art. 45 ter and DS 2227 art. 7.

DS 2227 art. 7.II requires the most appropriate method given the nature, economic reality and specific circumstances of each case. Art. 45 ter.II allows another method where none of the six can determine the value.

Applies whether or not an international intermediary unconnected with the origin or destination of the goods is interposed. This is the operative rule for Bolivian commodity flows and leaves little room to argue for a contract-date price.

Linf and Lsup are the minimum and maximum observations in the sample, so both bounds are driven entirely by the two extreme comparables and a single outlier shifts the whole range. A price inside the range is deemed unaffected by relatedness (art. 6.II); outside it, relatedness is taken to have influenced the price (art. 6.III). Benchmarking prepared to OECD percentile conventions does not satisfy the Bolivian formula and must be recomputed.

The taxpayer applies this formula in its own study; the SIN applies the equivalent adjustment when it re-determines the price under DS 2227 art. 8.II. Modelling exposure to the nearer bound, as in many OECD-aligned jurisdictions, understates the assessment.

Characteristics of goods or services, functions with risks and assets, contractual terms, market and economic circumstances, and commercial strategies. Differences must be immaterial or removable by technically justified adjustments. Bolivia has no domestic listed-company database and the SIN has approved no data source, so regional and foreign database sets are used with the selection rationale carried in the study — and all figures restated in bolivianos.

Resale price, cost plus and TNMM in DS 2227 art. 7 all start from the margin obtained by the taxpayer itself, with independent-party data as fallback, and every Form 601 profitability index is computed from the local filer's own figures. Testing the foreign counterparty is defensible only where the Bolivian entity is the more complex party and reliable foreign data exists.

Expressly covers management, legal, accounting, financial and technical services. Deduction requires that the service was effectively rendered and connected with the taxable activity, and remains subject to art. 18 of DS 24051 limiting deductions for payments abroad.

Measured on the aggregate value of related-party transactions in the fiscal period. The thresholds are unchanged since 2015 and are not inflation-indexed, so the population caught keeps widening. Many secondary sources report only a single Bs 7,500,000 trigger and miss the middle tier.

The functional analysis must cover group history and structure locally and worldwide, type of relatedness, markets and economic flows, commercial strategies and price drivers, the governing contracts with functions, assets and risks on both sides, and financial ratios including interest rates and royalty calculation criteria. The economic analysis must quantify each transaction and outstanding balance, justify the method as best reflecting the arm's length principle, identify comparables with data sources and reasons, set the range and compute any adjustment. This is a minimum, not a ceiling.

Transaction and comparable values are converted at the Banco Central de Bolivia official rate in force on each transaction date. Where a currency has no boliviano quotation, convert first to US dollars at the official rate published by the exchange-policy authority of the currency's home country, then to bolivianos. A group study prepared in English and in group currency will not satisfy art. 3 without full restatement.

RND 102600000014 of 16 April 2026 replaced RND 10-0008-15 art. 8 and ended the old paper-lodgement-plus-upload model. Bolivian year-ends are fixed by sector under DS 24051 art. 39: 31 March industrial and oil, 30 June rubber, brazil-nut, agricultural, livestock and agro-industrial, 30 September mining, 31 December banks, insurers, commerce, services and everything else. For 31 December 2025 year-ends, RND 102600000017 of 27 May 2026 widened the RND 102600000014 extension and moved the digitalised filing of the financial statements, memoria anual, EPT and Form 601 to 30 June 2026; the 29 May 2026 date survives only for the IUE return and payment.

Four sections capture the filer's profile, each related party with its foreign tax ID, residence and type of relatedness, and per-transaction data: type and code, amount, destination, currency, method code (1-6), profitability index (seven options, active only for methods 2-5), any adjustment, interest rate and royalties. The footer asks for related-party shares of total exports and imports and requires answers on group TP policy, restructurings, intangibles, discontinued business lines and whether a study supports the return.

No master file, no separate local file, no country-by-country report, notification or surrogate filing, and Bolivia has not signed the CbC Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement. A single national study plus Form 601 is the entire documentation architecture.

DS 2227's sole additional disposition amended art. 251 of the Customs Law Regulation (DS 25870) so that customs may call for the EPT to show relatedness did not affect the declared value, falling back to the secondary valuation methods if it cannot be sustained. It explains the Aduana Nacional's seat on the CTPT — and means tax and customs positions must be told the same way.

Nine transfer pricing formal-duty breaches are listed at RND 10-0008-15 art. 12 and consolidated at items 3.23-3.31 of the RND 10-0033-16 annex, applied at the same level to individuals and legal persons. The 2,500 UFV rate is flat: the 'before any action by the tax administration' condition in art. 12.II attaches only to the three late-filing items, not to the errors or incomplete-information items, and it drops out of the consolidated annex altogether. Paying the fine does not discharge the filing obligation (art. 12.III). Ley 1733 of 27/05/2026 art. 3.VI condoned art. 162 formal-duty fines not linked to a determination procedure for breaches committed up to 31/12/2025. The UFV is an inflation-indexed unit published daily by the Banco Central de Bolivia; convert against bcb.gob.bo before quoting a boliviano figure.

Anything delivered later than fifteen days after the date set in the requerimiento is treated as not filed at all. This is the practical production clock in a Bolivian transfer pricing audit and it is short by international standards.

Filing a compliant study does not by itself shield the taxpayer. Relief comes from the general Tax Code as rewritten by Ley 812: art. 156 reduces the sanction by 80% where the debt is paid after the tenth day following notification of the Vista de Cargo or Auto Inicial and before notification of the Resolución Determinativa or Sancionatoria, by 60% where paid after that notification and before the Recurso de Alzada is filed, and by 40% where paid after the alzada is filed and before the Recurso Jerárquico. Art. 157 (arrepentimiento eficaz) extinguishes the omisión de pago sanction where the debt is paid up to the tenth day after notification of the Vista de Cargo or Auto Inicial, or before tax enforcement of self-assessed returns.

Ley 1733 of 27 May 2026, Disposición Adicional Primera, replaced arts. 59 and 60 of Ley 2492 (which Ley 812 had set at eight years, ten for dealings with low- or nil-tax jurisdictions). Four years now covers control, investigation, verification and audit, determination of the tax debt, imposition of administrative sanctions and enforcement of the determined debt, which Ley 291 had made imprescriptible; two years covers enforcement of imposed sanctions. Time runs from 1 January of the calendar year following the payment due date. Arts. 61 and 62 are unchanged: interruption by notification of the Resolución Determinativa or acknowledgement of the debt, suspension for six months by notice of an individualised audit and for the duration of appeals. Caution: the consolidated Tax Code PDF hosted by the AIT predates both the Ley 812 and the Ley 1733 amendments.

A transfer pricing Vista de Cargo must go beyond the general requirements of Ley 2492 art. 96 and state the new transaction value, the comparability analysis, the valuation method used and the tax omitted — four checkable elements that are the first place to test an assessment.

Neither Ley 843, nor DS 2227's eleven articles, nor RND 10-0008-15 provides for APAs, so there is no application route, threshold, fee, term or rollback. The only forward-looking mechanism is the general binding ruling (consulta tributaria), re-regulated by RND 102600000021 of 10 June 2026.

DS 2227 art. 8 authorises only a primary adjustment and consequential re-characterisation of return items. No instrument deems the adjustment a constructive dividend or loan, and no repatriation mechanism exists. Counterparty relief depends entirely on a treaty mutual agreement procedure, so double taxation is the default outcome of a Bolivian adjustment.

There is no domestic MAP guidance or dedicated RND. The Spain-Bolivia convention of 30 June 1997 gives a three-year window from first notification to present a case to the competent authority of residence or nationality; the other five treaties were negotiated at different times and should not be assumed identical. Bolivia has not adopted the Action 14 minimum standard, has not signed the MLI, publishes no MAP statistics and has no mandatory binding arbitration.

Regional seats are Chuquisaca, La Paz, Santa Cruz and Cochabamba; the hierarchical appeal is open to the tax administration as well as the taxpayer. No transfer-pricing-specific AGIT or Supreme Court decision appears in the published record as at September 2026; AGIT resolutions are published as image-only scans.

It ends the parallel physical-plus-upload regime, extended the 31 December 2025 year-end deadline to 29 May 2026 — since moved to 30 June 2026 for the digitalised filings by RND 102600000017 of 27 May 2026, leaving 29 May to the IUE return and payment — excused taxpayers who had already filed on paper from re-filing, and required those still to file to use the updated SIAT from 22 April 2026.

Listing drives automatic relatedness under DS 2227 art. 2.I.3, and so the Form 601 and study obligations, but it no longer extends the limitation period: Ley 1733, enacted the same day, confined the two-year extension in Ley 2492 art. 59 to registration failures — the RND's own recitals still cite the art. 59.II ground repealed that very day. Remapping the group's counterparties against the new annex remains the highest-value compliance task of the 2026 cycle. Apply the old annex for years ending to 30 June 2026 and the new one from 30 September 2026.

As a non-member of the Inclusive Framework, Bolivia is not party to the GloBE Model Rules, the administrative guidance, the transitional safe harbours or the December 2025 side-by-side package, and it did not participate in the February 2024 Amount B report. DS 2227 art. 7 requires the most appropriate method in every case, with no simplified or fixed-return alternative for distributors. Mining and hydrocarbons extraction carry an additional surtax under Ley 843 art. 51 bis.

The move to signed PDF studies filed through SIAT alongside the financial statements — following an earlier requirement for text-searchable, non-scanned PDFs — points to machine screening of study data against Form 601 and the accounts. Form 601 already functions as a risk instrument through its per-transaction method codes, profitability indices, adjustments and footer questions. Practitioner commentary reports intensified SIN scrutiny of internationally connected agro-industry, commerce and technology groups; the SIN publishes no audit statistics.

Those series are dominated by e-invoicing (SIAT), the taxpayer registry, payment facilities and deadline extensions. The 2026 transfer pricing change travelled in the financial statements vehicle, RND 101800000004, which had itself been amended by RND 102400000040 of 27 December 2024 — worth monitoring as the likely route for further change.