The Department of Finance have launched a public consultation on Ireland’s transfer pricing rules. As announced in Ireland’s Corporation Tax Roadmap released last September, Ireland intends to update transfer pricing rules in Finance Bill 2019 which will take effect from 1 January 2020. The consultation period will run until 2 April 2019.

The consultation seeks feedback on a number of aspects of the current transfer pricing regime including:

• OECD 2017 guidelines – outline specific issues that may arise from the adoption of the 2017 OECD guidelines
• Grandfathered arrangements – detail specific issues arising from ending the exclusion from transfer pricing of arrangements in place prior to 1 July 2010 under existing grandfathering provisions
• SMEs – should the transfer pricing rules be extended to apply to SMEs and if so, what level of documentation would be appropriate to demonstrate compliance but also mitigate the additional compliance burden
• Non-trading income – outline the issues that may arise upon application of transfer pricing to non-trading income and how these may be resolved
• Capital transactions – whether the current market value rules are sufficient so that capital transactions should remain outside the scope of the transfer pricing rules
• Documentation – outline the issues arising from enhanced documentation requirements and in what circumstances should a reduced standard of documentation apply
• Branches – should transfer pricing rules apply to the taxation of branches in Ireland in line with the Authorised OECD approach.

Chartered Accountants Ireland under the auspices of the CCAB-I will be participating in this consultation and we are interested in hearing the views of our members via email to tax@charteredaccountants.ie by 26 March.