Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Socialist Party)
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88. To ask the Minister for Finance his plans to publish the criteria used by the Revenue Commissioners to determine an advance pricing arrangement. [24161/15]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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I am advised by the Revenue Commissioners that, while tax legislation does not set out specific criteria for advance pricing arrangements (APAs), Revenue adheres to the published OECD and EU transfer pricing guidelines for all bilateral APAs concluded with treaty partner countries.

An advance pricing arrangement is defined in the 2010 OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and Tax Administrations ("TPG") as "an arrangement that determines in advance of controlled transactions, an appropriate set of criteria for the determination of the transfer pricing for those transactions over a fixed period of time". 

An APA is formally initiated by a taxpayer and requires negotiations between the taxpayer, one or more associated enterprises and one or more tax administrations. Ireland will only enter into bilateral APAs with its treaty partners. As such, an APA involving Ireland will always involve two tax administrations, the other being a treaty partner country.

Bilateral APAs are agreed in accordance with the mutual agreement procedure article of the relevant double taxation treaty. For all bilateral APAs, Revenue adheres to the detailed guidelines for concluding APAs which are contained in "Annex to Chapter IV: Advance Pricing Arrangements" of the TPG.  All of our bilateral APAs are negotiated on the basis of identifying an arm's length remuneration for the transactions covered by the APA and in each case the transfer pricing method applied will be in accordance with one of the methodologies contained in Chapter II of the TPG.

In addition, when negotiating a bilateral APA with an EU Member State, Revenue will adhere to the best practices for the conduct of APA procedures which are set out in the Guidelines for Advance Pricing Agreements within the EU which have been published by the EU Joint Transfer Pricing Forum.