Transfer Pricing on Trial — Executive Summary Edition

About the book

A transfer pricing study may be technically respectable and still fail when tested in an audit or court. The problem is rarely only the method — the problem is proof. By the time a matter reaches audit, objection, appeal or trial, the question is no longer whether the taxpayer selected the right method or benchmark, but whether it can prove, with admissible and credible evidence, that its position reflects an arm’s length outcome. This executive summary is built around one core question: is your transfer pricing position trial-ready, or merely documented?

In eleven compact chapters it follows the dispute lifecycle from documentation to audit, from audit to evidence, and from evidence to trial: the transfer pricing study as a starting point rather than a defence; contemporaneous documentation prepared while corporate memory is fresh; managing the initial audit strategically from the first request for information; insisting on clarity in the letter of findings; the law of evidence — burden of proof, admissibility, hearsay, business records; expert witnesses who assist the court rather than advocate; the trial, the appeal, and the recent substance, DEMPE and anti-avoidance case law reshaping disputes. Each chapter sets out the practical problem, the key points, the risk if the issue is ignored, and what the full book adds.

It is the free lead-in to the full 412-page edition of Transfer Pricing on Trial, which carries the working tools this summary only describes: interviews with senior counsel from the ABD Ltd v CSARS trial, evidence guides, audit templates and rules of engagement, cross-examination examples, the ABD judgment itself, five case studies, and annexures A to R. The summary gives the reader the roadmap; the full book gives the working tools.

“Is your transfer pricing position trial-ready, or merely documented?”Dr Daniel N Erasmus

What you’ll learn

• Why a transfer pricing study is not the same as evidence — the compliance mindset asks “have we prepared a study”; the trial-ready mindset asks “can we prove every material assumption in that study if challenged in court”
• Contemporaneous documentation as future trial evidence: capture interviews, agreements, invoices and actual conduct while corporate memory is fresh — later reconstruction is weaker and less credible
• How to manage the audit strategically from the first request for information, and why the letter of findings can define, narrow or distort the entire future dispute
• The law of evidence applied to transfer pricing: burden of proof, admissibility, hearsay, business records, and the different roles of factual and expert witnesses
• How trials are won — a clear case theory, disciplined evidence, experts who assist the court rather than advocate — and why appeals cannot fix evidential weaknesses left at trial
• Why recent case law on substance, DEMPE and anti-avoidance increasingly reaches into transfer pricing disputes

Inside the book

1. Introduction
2. The transfer pricing study starting point
3. Contemporaneous documentation for audit and trial evidence
4. The initial tax audit
5. The audit findings
6. Giving evidence
7. Expert reports at trial
8. The transfer pricing trial
9. The transfer pricing appeal
10. Recent case law impacting transfer pricing
11. Final lessons
12. Annexures
13. Case studies
14. Continue with the full book