Transfer Pricing in Peru

The legal framework

Peru's transfer pricing regime rests on two provisions of the Income Tax Law: Article 32, which requires that transfers of goods, services and rights be valued at market value for tax purposes, and Article 32-A, which defines what market value means between connected persons. Numeral 4 of Article 32 is the routing rule. It sends three categories of dealing into Article 32-A: transactions with related parties, transactions from, to or through low- or nil-tax and non-cooperative jurisdictions (44 of them, listed in Annex 1 of the Regulation), and transactions with counterparties whose income from the dealing enjoys a preferential regime. Chapter XIX of the Regulation, articles 108 to 119, supplies the operating detail.

Two structural features distinguish Peru from most Latin American neighbours. The first is that scope is not confined to cross-border dealings — purely domestic related-party transactions fall squarely within Article 32-A, even though an adjustment only follows in the circumstances set out in subsection (c). The second is the asymmetry of that adjustment power. SUNAT may adjust only where the agreed value produces less Peruvian tax than the arm's length outcome would, tested on the independent effect of each transaction, or where the adjustment increases tax on dealings with other related parties. There is no general power to adjust a mispriced transaction in the taxpayer's favour.

The related-party definition is broad and mechanical. Article 32-A(b) states the participation-in-management-control-or-capital principle and catches dealings routed through interposed persons to disguise a connection; Regulation article 24 then sets out twelve deeming situations, most keyed to a 30% ownership or profit-participation threshold, plus shared decision-makers, consolidated financial statements, collaboration and association-in-participation contracts, permanent establishments, and dominant influence over management bodies. Practitioners regularly overlook the separate economic-dependency test: a resident deriving 80% or more of its sales from one counterparty, where those dealings are at least 30% of the counterparty's purchases, is related for the whole of the following year regardless of ownership.

On the status of the OECD Guidelines, Article 32-A(h) makes them a source of interpretation only, valid so far as they do not conflict with the Law. The Supreme Court put that beyond argument in Casación 27181-2024-Lima, published on 24 March 2026: the Guidelines are auxiliary interpretative instruments, not a source of tax law under the Tax Code, and cannot by themselves support an adjustment where no express domestic rule exists. The case concerned tax year 2005 and the then-absent statutory basis for the interquartile range, so the holding on ranges is time-limited — but the point of principle is not.

Methods, comparables and benchmarking

Article 32-A(e) lists seven methods: CUP, resale price, cost plus, profit split, residual profit split, TNMM and other methods. Selection is by most appropriate method with no hierarchy, and Regulation article 113 supplies four criteria — fit with the business, quality and availability of information, achievable comparability, and the smallest volume of adjustment required. Article 112 requires transaction-by-transaction analysis unless dealings are closely linked or continuous, and article 113 requires segmented financial data for TNMM unless segmentation is demonstrably impossible. Company-wide margins applied to a mixed transaction set are a standing audit exposure.

Peru's benchmarking rules are unusually prescriptive. Where two or more comparables exist, a range must be built, and the range is the interquartile range. If the tested value sits outside it and Peruvian tax is thereby reduced, market value becomes the median — not the nearest edge. Regulation article 115 sets out a position-based interpolation formula for the median and the quartiles, so the statutory algorithm governs rather than a spreadsheet default; a benchmark computed with a generic percentile function can produce a defensible-looking number that is nonetheless not the statutory one. One concession exists: under CUP, where the coefficient of variation of the comparable values is 3% or less, the full minimum-to-maximum range applies.

Peru also runs its own commodities regime rather than the Guidelines' quoted-price approach. For Annex 2 goods, market value is set by reference to the quotation, and since Decreto Legislativo 1537 the exporter or importer must file a sworn pre-shipment communication by the time loading or unloading begins, setting out the quotation period, counterparty, quantity, Incoterm, refining and treatment charges and premiums. Miss it, file late, file incompletely, or file something that does not match the contract, and the quotation date defaults to the end of shipment or unloading — a deemed date that can move the price materially. Using anything other than CUP on Annex 2 goods requires a separate technical justification filing under Resolución de Superintendencia 000123-2024/SUNAT.

Comparables geography is a matter of statute, not merely of practice. The penultimate paragraph of Article 32-A(d) permits information on foreign companies only where local information is not available, and then subject to adjustments for differences between the markets; the OECD profile records that preference. Given the size of the Peruvian listed universe, regional Latin American sets and customs data are the practical reality for most benchmarks — but the file should record why local data was unavailable rather than treat a regional set as the natural starting point. Beyond that, audit friction concentrates on the acceptance or rejection of individual comparables and on comparability adjustments.

Documentation: what SUNAT expects

Three informative returns carry the compliance load, all filed through SUNAT Virtual and all in Spanish. The Reporte Local (Form 3560) is due where accrued income exceeds 2,300 UIT, in two tiers: transactions of 100 to under 400 UIT need Annex I only, while 400 UIT or more triggers Annexes II to IV, including the narrative file and a transaction-by-transaction methods spreadsheet. Selling goods below cost triggers the obligation regardless of amount. The Reporte Maestro (Form 3561) applies where group income exceeds 20,000 UIT and transactions reach 400 UIT — note that the transaction element comes from Resolución 163-2018/SUNAT, not from the statute. The Reporte País por País (Form 3562) applies at consolidated revenue of S/ 2,700 million and is filed through the IR-AEOI system. The UIT thresholds are measured against the UIT of the year reported on, not the year of filing, so a fiscal year 2025 return uses S/ 5,350 and not the 2026 figure.

Deadlines follow the monthly obligations calendar: the Local Report on the May-period dates of the following year, the Master and CbC reports on the September-period dates, which in practice means October. For FY2025 this is disrupted. Resolución de Superintendencia 000113-2026/SUNAT postponed the Local Report to the October 2026 period due dates — which themselves fall in November 2026, a distinction the press coverage has blurred — because Form 3560 needs reconfiguring for the new valuation methods.

The content requirements in Regulation article 117(a) are demanding and repay early attention. Beyond the familiar organisational and functional material, the Local Report must explain why services do not qualify as low value-adding, identify the tested party and justify that selection, justify any multi-year analysis, describe the comparables search methodology and sources, and attach financial statements with working papers tying the tested financials back to them. Supporting documentation, translated into Spanish where applicable, must be kept for five years or the limitation period, whichever is longer.

One statutory protection is worth knowing: Article 32-A(g) bars SUNAT from relying solely on the Country-by-Country report to make an adjustment. It is a risk-assessment instrument, not evidence of mispricing.

Audits, penalties and the enforcement climate

The penalty architecture is percentage-based and, for larger taxpayers, capped in a way that softens the headline. Failure to file an informative return on time, and filing one incompletely or inaccurately, each attract 0.6% of net income under Article 176 of the Tax Code, subject to a floor of 10% of a UIT and a ceiling of 25 UIT. Failure to produce the underlying documentation, or its Spanish translation, carries the same scale under Article 177 numeral 27. Where an adjustment produces understated tax, Article 178 numeral 1 imposes 50% of the omitted amount plus late-payment interest.

Peru offers no documentation-based penalty protection — the old Article 179-A incentive regime went in 2007. What it does offer is the gradualidad regime, under which voluntary correction before SUNAT notifies the infringement carries a 100% reduction. SUNAT confirmed in Informe 000063-2024 that this extends to commodities-communication failures, though correcting the filing does not undo the deemed quotation date.

Audit exposure is longer than elsewhere in the tax system. Article 62-A caps a definitive audit at one year, extendable to two, but numeral 3 disapplies that limit for transfer pricing. Binding precedent RTF 03500-Q-2017 confines the exception: once the year has passed, SUNAT may request only material relating to the transfer pricing rules, not a general extension of the audit. The general four-year limitation period in Article 43 applies, with six years where no return was filed.

The enforcement climate has tightened noticeably. SUNAT exchanged 192 CbC reports with more than 70 jurisdictions during 2024 and its international information requests rose from 107 to 136. Reported focus areas are inconsistencies between the Local Report and the annual return, benefit-test failures on intra-group services, and substance-profit mismatches. The fourth Catálogo de Esquemas de Alto Riesgo Fiscal, published on 1 July 2026, added 11 schemes to reach 35, six of them related-party financing disguised within corporate or commercial arrangements. The catalogue is not binding, but it is a reliable map of audit selection.

The case law is developing fast. RTF 02374-4-2025 is the first Tribunal Fiscal decision applying the Article 32-A(i) service requirements, denying an airline's deductions for FY2017 because the provider's costs and the allocation criteria were not evidenced. A July 2025 decision set aside a US$1.45 million adjustment on a US$176 million mineral concentrate export, addressing burden of proof on comparables and functional currency under TNMM.

Dispute resolution and advance certainty

Peru's advance certainty offering is formally complete and practically unused. Article 32-A(f) permits unilateral APAs with SUNAT and bilateral APAs concluded by the National Superintendent with treaty competent authorities. Regulation article 118 gives SUNAT 24 months from presentation of the proposal to approve or reject it, extendable by a further 12, with no deemed rejection on silence — the decision must rest on an informe técnico. The proposal must be lodged before the transactions take place, withdrawal by any related party defeats it, and an approved APA covers the year of approval plus the three following years. Decreto Legislativo 1662 added rollback for bilateral APAs from 1 January 2025, available where facts and circumstances were the same and assessment powers have not lapsed, but blocked once a determination resolution has issued. Against all of that, practitioner sources report that no APA has ever been concluded in Peru, SUNAT publishes no statistics, and the regulation of APAs with foreign competent authorities remained pending as at the October 2025 OECD profile. Treat a Peruvian APA as an untested route.

MAP is the more realistic path. The National Superintendent of SUNAT acts as competent authority under Resolución Ministerial 383-2021-EF/10, cases sit with the DNAAMMT, and SUNAT published MAP Guidance Version 2.0 in 2026. Most treaties allow three years from first notification: the MLI replaced Canada's two-year limit with three from 1 January 2026 and supplies a three-year period for Chile, whose treaty contains none. Brazil is the outlier — it signed the MLI on 20 October 2025 but has not ratified, so the Peru-Brazil treaty is unmodified and the MAP request follows domestic-law deadlines. Access is generous, and a case may be admitted while domestic remedies run, but the practical limit matters: SUNAT will not resolve a MAP while court proceedings are ongoing, and it is bound by a final judgment — after which relief can come only from the other competent authority. Arbitration is available solely by agreement of both authorities, under the Chile and Canada treaties.

Domestically, a reclamación must be filed within 20 business days, and SUNAT has 12 months rather than the usual nine to resolve transfer pricing claims. Appeal lies to the Tribunal Fiscal, then to the courts and cassation. On secondary effects, an adjustment does not generally create a deemed dividend, but Article 24-A(g) treats an indirect disposition of income as one, taxed at 5%. RTF 11541-11-2024 holds that an adjustment is not automatically such a disposition; Casación 33969-2024-Lima declined to confirm and remanded, so the point is genuinely open.

Pillar Two, Amount B and what changes in 2026

Peru has not enacted Pillar Two. As at August 2026 there is no income inclusion rule, no UTPR and no qualified domestic minimum top-up tax in Peruvian law, and none appears in the 2026 tax-change round-up. Peruvian subsidiaries of in-scope groups are nonetheless affected through their parents' calculations, and a QDMTT is under discussion as a defensive measure — the familiar pattern of a jurisdiction weighing whether to collect its own top-up rather than cede it abroad. Groups should model the Peruvian effective tax rate now; the domestic rules can follow quickly once a decision is taken.

Amount B is similarly unadopted domestically. Peru told the OECD it will respect outcomes applied by covered jurisdictions and is evaluating the legislative framework, and it appears on the OECD's June 2024 covered-jurisdictions list, but neither Article 32-A nor Chapter XIX contains a simplified approach for baseline distribution and the December 2025 amendments did not add one. A Peruvian distributor cannot elect into Amount B.

What did change is valuation. Decreto Legislativo 1663 rewrote the other-methods rule from 1 January 2025, naming discounted cash flow, multiples, net equity value, appraisal and MPEEM. For unlisted shares the first four are all available — the rule is not a DCF monopoly — while MPEEM is reserved to other transactions, and DCF is barred where the transferor holds under 5% of paid-in capital or the issuer's prior-year net income did not exceed 1,700 UIT. Decreto Supremo 302-2025-EF then required, through new Regulation article 113-B, that these methods follow internationally accepted best practice including the IVSC International Valuation Standards, with the technical report meeting IVS reporting content. That is a significant discipline: share transfers and intangible disposals between related parties now need a valuation report that would stand up to a valuation professional, not a tax memorandum. The same decree confined the comparability, range and adjustment articles to methods 1 to 6. Also new for 2026: the MLI entered into force for Peru on 1 October 2025 and applies from 1 January 2026 across its covered agreements, and the UIT rose to S/ 5,500 — a figure that governs fiscal year 2026 thresholds, not the returns filed during 2026.

How practitioners should respond

Four priorities follow from the current state of the rules. First, treat the intra-group services file as the primary audit risk. RTF 02374-4-2025 turned on the absence of evidence of the provider's costs and the allocation criteria — not on the price. Build that evidence contemporaneously: cost pools, allocation keys with a written rationale, and a documented justification for any change of key. Where the 5% cap on low value-adding services is claimed, the file must also explain why the services fall in that category, and where it is not claimed, why they do not.

Second, run the benchmark to the statutory arithmetic. Regulation article 115 prescribes the percentile formula; a value outside the range attracts the median, not the nearest quartile, so the difference between a compliant and a convenient calculation is the whole adjustment. Document the comparables search, the rejections, the adjustments and the tested-party rationale in the file itself rather than in a working paper that never reaches SUNAT — and, where the set is regional rather than Peruvian, record why local information was not available.

Third, treat the commodities communication as an operational control, not a tax filing. It is due before the goods move, its content must match the contract, and the sanction for getting it wrong is a substituted quotation date. That belongs with the trading desk and the logistics function, on a calendar, with a named owner.

Fourth, plan for the 2026 timetable and the new valuation standard together. The FY2025 Local Report has moved to the October 2026 period due dates while Form 3560 is rebuilt for the new methods, which buys time but does not reduce work — any share transfer or intangible disposal priced under the other-methods rule now needs an IVS-grade technical report ready to produce on request. Given that no APA has ever been concluded in Peru and bilateral APA regulation remains pending, certainty in Peru is earned through documentation quality and, where double taxation arises, through MAP — not through advance agreement.