The above handbook was circulated for comments on 30 April 2013, setting out key suggested information how tax authorities should go about conducting transfer pricing audits.

The DRAFT was presented at a recent Africa TP Summit, which caused a bit of a scene with the South African Revenue Service authorities who stormed out of the presentation suggesting that the Professor who was presenting the content of the OECD DRAFT for delegates to take note of its details, was misrepresenting SARS. Delegates, and some later SARS officials were confused by this. But it does indicate that SARS seems to think it should not pay attention to international benchmark standards developed by the OECD, despite the fact that South Africa has observer status at the OECD, and its former Commissioner, now Minister of Finance, Pravin Gordhan was Chairperson of its Tax Administration Forum.

TP in South Africa and Africa is entering an aggressive phase. MNE’s in those countries will be facing severe TP audits where those governments attempt to address the ‘ills of the past’. Our firm www.TaxRiskManagement.com specializes in Africa TP – from TP studies to TP audits and TP disputes. We have recently resolved just under USD$100m for clients in Africa, where the adjustments resulted in about 6% of what was being claimed. In most cases to date, the adjustment has been 0. These include TP audits and disputes in South Africa, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Uganda.

RECENT COMMENTS RELEASED ON THE DRAFT OECD Handbook on Transfer Pricing Risk Assessment.

The OECD has just released various comments on these guidelines. From a perusal of the list of commentators, there appear to be no comments from Africa.

Is Africa bound by the OECD guidelines as ‘soft law’ in relation to Transfer Pricing?

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