THE ITALIAN GUIDELINES ON THE ARM’S LENGTH PRINCIPLE NEED FURTHER CLARIFICATION

The proposed draft Transfer Pricing guidelines released by the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) on 21 February 2018 fail to provide a clear guidance on how to evaluate whether the results stemming from the application of the transfer pricing methods are at arm’s length or not. Rather, we believe that some proposed guidance could create confusion and leave the taxpayer in uncertainty.

Our concerns relate to the following issues

• The concepts of “control” and “dominant influence” are not clear
• The wording used with regard to the financial indicator is misleading
• The meaning of “aggregation of transactions” is to be defined
• The “fair” position within the arm’s length range ought to be clarified

We provided our comments on 21 March 2018

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