Amanda Heale
Jun 8, 2022
The fact that more funds are being provided to the CRA for audit and enforcement of large multinationals would suggest that the federal government has a continuing interest in pursuing transfer pricing cases. This was just one of several key observations made by Amanda Heale, partner in Osler’s Toronto tax group, during an exclusive interview with Bloomberg Law News.
“A lot of the earlier transfer pricing cases were actually about pricing,” says Amanda. “Cases that started coming out [after Glaxo, GE, and McKesson] were much more … philosophical. They were about the sort of validity of the taxpayer structure and not just pricing transactions.”
“In terms of just the level of activity and audit and transfer pricing audits specifically, I think the feeling in the tax community is that Canada has been particularly aggressive ̶ that they are relatively well funded and certainly perceived at least as taking relatively aggressive positions.”
Amanda says that there are several cases in the system that deal with inbound hybrid debt structures. These should be the first significant recharacterization cases that follow the Federal Court of Appeal’s guidance concerning the interpretation and application of the recharacterization transfer pricing rule in the Cameco case.
“I think transfer pricing will continue to be an area of intense audit interest,” says Amanda.
If you have a subscription to Bloomberg Tax you can read the full article by author James Munson published on May 31, 2022.