BEPS initiatives the implementation of which started in Kazakhstan in 2017 pay great attention to pricing of intragroup services. One of the key principles underlying BEPS is as follows: the cost of intragroup services should match the benefit that a customer receives.

How can you make sure that this principle is observed in the intragroup transactions as related to acquisition of your company services? You may start with exploring the following questions:

• Make sure that a markup of the services is at the market level. As a rule, to this end a benchmarking is required.
• Exclude the “shareholder activities” from the contractor costs
  
• Ensure a possibility of transparent determination of the contractor cost structure.
  
• Apply the fair and logical methods of overhead allocation.
  
• Make sure that there is no duplication of services with the functions of the contactor’s internal departments.
  
• Prepare the required primary documents.
  
• Perform a “benefits test” ² : often the most important and difficult thing is to prove that the customer really needs these services.
  

Do you have intragroup services?

Please call our Transfer Pricing Hotline
+7 771 781 8828
 

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¹ “Shareholder activities” mean activity performed by a member of multinational group (as a rule by a parent company or a regional holding company) solely because of its ownership interest in one or more group members, i.e. in the capacity of a shareholder. Source: Transfer Pricing Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and Tax Administrations, 2017

² The purpose of the “Benefits test” is to prove that a taxpayer used a service and amount that the taxpayer paid as service expenses correspond to the market level.