TPED – Transfer Pricing Economists for Development

Our Mission

Transfer Pricing Economists for Development (TPED) is a Paris-based Non-Profit Organization aiming to promote business economics knowledge-sharing in transfer pricing, notably in emerging and developing countries.

Embrace the social responsibility of transfer pricing economists
Encourage private-public cooperation and not opposition
Provide objective and independent views and advice

Emerging and developing countries are getting increasingly concerned about transfer pricing and increasingly endorse transfer pricing regulations, while a number of international and multilateral organizations (UN, OECD, the World Bank, the IMF, etc.) are supporting such initiatives.

These international organizations are key contributors to capacity building and legislative development in transfer pricing throughout the world. Our mission is to complement and support their initiatives by providing business economics content supporting capacity building and normative development.

We believe that increased knowledge of business economics, as well as giving access to appropriate economic tools to these countries should:

Improve communications between local tax administrations and multinational enterprises, as all parties should benefit from higher quality of technical discussions in transfer pricing
Enhance cooperative compliance and taxpayer morale, and serve as a state-building initiative
Allow more secured revenue collection in transfer pricing audits where economic analysis is used – especially if initiatives are coordinated with existing international programmes
Discourage certain countries to move away from the arm’s length standard by enabling these countries to see the possibility and benefits of applying economics to implement arm’s length.

Content & Tools: Development and Implementation

Identify technical issues in business economics that are critically relevant for the application of arm’s length transfer pricing in emerging economies and developing countries and initiate, edit and publish economic studies covering selected topics
Assist in the development of tools for the practical implementation of the findings of published economic studies
Promote TPED’s economic findings and tools and assist in their implementation, by way of participating to conferences, workshops and meetings with governments and tax administrations of emerging economies and developing countries

Some of the topics already identified are:

Coping with the lack of comparables
Understanding where countries position themselves in complex global value chains for relevant industries
Address location-specific advantages (LSAs) in local countries.

Ad-hoc technical assistance missions focused on business economics:

Expert support in specific cases
Arbitration support and advice for conflict resolution
Technical support for normative reform