Transfer Pricing: Practices and Manipulation in India

Transfer pricing as a corporate stratagem, is of relatively recent origin. No comprehensive research is undertaken in India to explore the influence of corporate taxes and product tariffs on reported transfer prices of MNCs in India. This book, therefore, examine the transfer pricing practices, and impact of taxes and tariffs on the transfer pricing decisions of the MNCs in India. The book provides estimates of Transfer Pricing Incentive (TPI) coefficients establishing that the reported transfer price changes with the change in the transfer pricing incentives. TPI provides opportunity to MNCs to manipulate transfer price to maximize profits across world-wide locations of operations and reduce tax liability. The book should be especially useful to the corporate policy makers in adoption of best practices on one hand and regulatory authorities to plug off the existing loopholes in the transfer pricing practices on the other hand. The empirical analysis of results in this book identifies the industries / countries most prone to transfer pricing manipulation, and may facilitate the tax authorities in protection of their tax base in India.