How To Maintain Corporate Transfer Pricing Processes Remotely

Companies are instructing whole departments to work from home, and the traditional workplace is increasingly reserved for jobs that cannot be performed remotely. This presents challenges for MNEs, especially at the headquarters level, such as keeping information and workflows organized, and maintaining effective communication and collaboration between stakeholders and ‘gatekeepers’ in different departments of global entities.

These challenges are pronounced in MNE transfer pricing teams due to the global nature of intercompany transactions and the local country functions, assets and risks, which are the factual foundation for analyses. Transfer pricing processes require a large amount of information that is commonly housed in disparate IT systems, databases, and in the minds of key personnel (and often on their local hard drives). If demand continues to weaken, companies will increasingly shed workers, and sooner or later this could lead to the loss of knowledge and information that is critical for maintaining effective transfer pricing processes and documentation. MNEs would be wise to think about and invest in transfer pricing information and process management systems, since these effectiveness-improving systems increasingly act as continuity management systems -especially in the current climate.
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