CBDT signs seven unilateral advance pricing agreements

The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) on Tuesday entered into seven unilateral Advance Pricing Agreements (APAs).

"The CBDT has entered into 10 Advance Pricing Agreements over the last one week, including seven unilateral APAs signed on Tuesday," the Finance Ministry said here in a statement.

"Two of these 10 agreements are bilateral APAs with the United Kingdom and Japan. Seven of these have rollback provisions in them," the ministry said.

The APAs entered into over the last week pertain to various sectors of the economy, like telecom, pharmaceutical, banking and finance, steel, retail and information technology, among others, it said.

"The international transactions covered in these agreements include payment of royalty fee, trading in goods, IT-enabled services, software development services, marketing support services, clinical research services, non-binding investment advisory services, etc.," it added.

With this, the total number of APAs entered into by the CBDT has reached 140. This includes 10 bilateral APAs and 130 unilateral APAs.

In the current financial year, a total of 76 APAs (seven bilateral APAs and 61 unilateral APAs) have been entered into.

"The CBDT expects more APAs to be concluded and signed before the end of the current fiscal," the statement said.

The APA scheme was introduced in the Income Tax Act in 2012 and the "rollback" provisions were introduced in 2014.

The scheme endeavours to provide certainty to taxpayers in the domain of transfer pricing by specifying the methods of pricing and setting the prices of international transactions in advance.

"Since its inception, the APA scheme has evinced a lot of interest from taxpayers and that has resulted in more than 700 applications (both unilateral and bilateral) being filed so far in about five years," the statement said.

The progress of the APA scheme fosters a non-adversarial tax regime.

"The Indian APA programme has been appreciated nationally and internationally for being able to address complex transfer pricing issues in a fair and transparent manner," it said.