Press Release No. 17/239

The Platform for Collaboration on Tax Delivers a Toolkit to Provide Guidance to Developing Countries to Better Protect Tax Bases

June 22, 2017

The Platform for Collaboration on Tax (PCT) – a joint initiative of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), United Nations (UN) and World Bank Group – has published a toolkit to provide practical guidance to developing countries to better protect their tax bases.

The toolkit responds to a request by the Development Working Group of the G20, and addresses an area of tax called “transfer pricing,” which refers to the prices corporations use when they make transactions between members of the same group. How these prices are set has significant relevance for the amount of tax an individual government can collect from a multinational enterprise.

The toolkit, called “ A Toolkit for Addressing Difficulties in Accessing Comparables Data for Transfer Pricing Analyses ,” specifically addresses the ways developing countries can overcome a lack of data needed to implement transfer pricing rules. This data is needed to determine whether the prices the enterprise uses accord with those which would be expected between independent parties. The guidance will also help countries set rules and practices that are more predictable for business.

Since the pricing of transactions between related parties in the extractive industries is an issue of particular relevance to many developing countries, the toolkit also addresses the information gaps on prices of minerals sold in an intermediate form (such as concentrates).

The toolkit is part of a series of reports by the Platform to help developing countries design or administer strong tax systems. Previous reports have covered tax incentives and external support for building tax capacity in developing countries .

The delivery of the toolkit coincides with the Third Meeting of the Inclusive Framework on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS), held in the Netherlands on 21-22 June 2017, and demonstrates the commitment of the Platform partners to work together to tackle a wide range of pressing tax issues.

The toolkit has been updated following comments on a consultation draft which was made public in January 2017. The toolkit is also available in French and Spanish.

For more information on the PCT, visit: http://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/platform-for-tax-collaboration

Media queries should be directed to:

IMF: media@imf.org

OECD: Pascal Saint-Amans, Pascal.Saint-Amans@oecd.org
UN: Alexander Trepelkov, trepelkov@un.org
World Bank Group: Julia Oliver, joliver@worldbankgroup.org