ICAP (International Compliance Assurance Program)

20^th june 2024

The International Compliance Assurance Program (“ICAP”) is a voluntary risk assessment and assurance program. Under ICAP, multiple tax administrations come together to simultaneously risk-assess a multinational group (MNE). In return, the program offers MNEs a level of tax assurance that no new tax audits will be opened regarding the low-risk covered transactions for a specified period by the participating tax administrations. The goal of ICAP is not, per se, the avoidance or relief of double taxation but, rather, the potential avoidance of audits and, thus, indirectly of double taxation.

Earlier this year, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released the first aggregated ICAP statistics.

The statistics cover all cases completed by October 2023, including the two ICAP pilots, and provide an overview of the jurisdictions and topics covered by the completed risk assessments, the time taken to complete a risk assessment, and aggregated data on risk assessment outcomes. They also consider the relationship between ICAP and other routes to tax certainty such as advance pricing arrangements (APAs) and mutual agreement procedures (MAPs), including how these tools complement each other and can be used together by an MNE group to manage its tax risk and increase tax certainty.

Key takeaways from the statistics include:

• 20 ICAP cases were completed by October 2023, with more currently in progress.
• The average time taken from the start of an ICAP process to the issuing of risk assessment outcomes to an MNE was 61 weeks, which is higher than the maximum target timeframe of 52 weeks described in the ICAP handbook, in part due to the impact of Covid-19 on the second pilot.
• For 40% of MNE groups, all the main covered transfer pricing risk areas were considered low risk by all tax administrations that included them in the scope of the risk assessment.
• The risk area that received the highest proportion of low-risk outcomes was permanent establishments (PEs) (considered low risk in 95% of instances where the topic was included in the scope of a tax administration’s risk assessment), followed by tangible property (90%), intragroup services (88%), financing (76%), and intangible property (IP) (75%).

MNEs interested in applying for ICAP, including MNEs that have already participated in the program, may reach out to the tax administration in which their group is headquartered.