The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the World Customs Organization (WCO) with the support of China Customs Cooperation Fund organized a regional Customs Valuation and Transfer Pricing Workshop for Customs and Tax officials of the WCO Asia Pacific region.

The Workshop held at the Yangzhou Multi Tax Centre, China, from 4 to 8 March 2019 was attended by about forty transfer pricing and Customs valuation specialists.  The programme consisted of an overview of the WTO Customs Valuation Agreement including relevant WCO Technical Committee on Customs Valuation (TCCV) instruments, the OECD Transfer Pricing guidelines and country presentations.

For related party transactions, Customs examine the circumstances surrounding the sale when there are doubts that the price has been influenced by the relationship while for Tax officials, the focus is the arm´s length principle.

Relevant Customs valuation issues to this Workshop such as related party transactions, royalties and high-value intangibles were discussed.  From the transfer pricing perspective, the discussion was mainly about the use of transfer pricing documentation for Customs valuation, retroactive adjustments, functional and comparability analysis.

The crux of the Workshop was the interaction between Customs valuation and transfer pricing specialists.  There was general acknowledgement by the participants of the different methodologies for the two domains and welcomed the opportunity provided through this Workshop for Tax and Customs officials to learn each other’s work and challenges and identify areas of cooperation which would assist in their deliverables.  Exchange of information and cooperation were identified as being areas of mutual benefit.

This Workshop which is a continuation of a series of regional Workshops for Customs and Tax officials as part of joint WCO/OECD efforts to explore synergy between Customs valuation and transfer pricing provided a good platform for Customs and Tax officials to interact and learn each other’s methodology when addressing related party transactions.

The WCO Guide to Customs Valuation and Transfer Pricing is available via the following link: http://www.wcoomd.org/en/topics/valuation/instruments-and-tools/guide-to-customs-valuation-and-transfer-pricing.aspx