CBDT signs five more advance pricing agreements

The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) on Friday signed five more unilateral advance pricing agreements (APAs) with taxpayers.

With this, the total number of APAs becomes 103, of which four are bilateral and 99 are unilateral.

The scheme endeavours to provide certainty to taxpayers in the domain of transfer pricing by specifying the methods of pricing and determining the arm's length price of international transactions in advance for a maximum period of five future years.

"A total of 39 APAs have already been concluded in six months of the current financial year," a statement said.

The CBDT expects more APAs to be concluded and signed in the near future.

"The taxpayer has the option to rollback the APA for four preceding years. Since its inception, the APA scheme has attracted tremendous interest among Multi National Enterprises (MNEs) and more than 700 applications (both unilateral and bilateral) have been filed in just four years," it said.

The APA scheme was introduced in the income-tax act in 2012 and the rollback provisions were introduced in 2014.

According to the statement, the progress of the APA scheme strengthens the government's commitment to foster a non-adversarial tax regime.

--IANS

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