Tag: Fair market value

§ 1.482-6(c)(3)(i)(B)(2) Nonroutine contributions of intangible property.

In many cases, nonroutine contributions of a taxpayer to the relevant business activity may be contributions of intangible property. For purposes of paragraph (c)(3)(i)(B)(1) of this section, the relative value of nonroutine intangible property contributed by taxpayers may be measured by external market benchmarks that reflect the fair market value of such intangible property. Alternatively, the relative value of nonroutine intangible property contributions may be estimated by the capitalized cost of developing the intangible property and all related improvements and updates, less an appropriate amount of amortization based on the useful life of each intangible property. Finally, if the intangible property development expenditures of the parties are relatively constant over time and the useful life of the intangible property contributed by all parties is approximately the same, the amount of actual expenditures in recent years may be used to estimate the relative value of nonroutine intangible property contributions ...

US vs TBL LICENSING LLC, January 2022, U.S. Tax Court, Case No. 158 T.C. No 1 (Docket No. 21146-15)

A restructuring that followed the acquisition of Timberland by VF Enterprises in 2011 resulted in an intra-group transfer of ownership to valuable intangibles to a Swiss corporation, TBL Investment Holdings. The IRS was of the opinion that gains from the transfer was taxable. Judgement of the US Tax Court The tax court upheld the assessment of the tax authorities. Excerpt: “we have concluded that petitioner’s constructive distribution to VF Enterprises of the TBL GmbH stock that petitioner constructively received in exchange for its intangible property was a “disposition†within the meaning of section 367(d)(2)(A)(ii)(II). We also conclude, for the reasons explained in this part IV, that no provision of the regulations allows petitioner to avoid the recognition of gain under that statutory provision.†“Because we do not “agree[] to reduce the adjustment to income for the trademarks based on a 20-year useful life limitation, pursuant to Temp. Treas. Reg. § 1.367(d)-1T,†we determine, in accordance with the parties’ stipulation, that “[p]etitioner’s increase in income for the transfer of the trademarks is $1,274,100,000.†Adding that figure to the agreed value of the foreign workforce and customer relationships that petitioner transferred to TBL GmbH and reducing the sum by the agreed trademark basis, we conclude that petitioner’s income for the taxable year in issue should be increased by $1,452,561,000 ($1,274,100,000 +$23,400,000 + $174,400,000 − $19,339,000), as determined in the notice of deficiency. Because petitioner did not assign error to the other two adjustments reflected in the notice of deficiency, it follows that respondent is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Accordingly, we will grant respondent’s motion for summary judgment and deny petitioner’s corresponding motion.” Click here for translation US vs TBL Licensing LLC Jan 2022 US tax court ...

Uganda vs Bondo Tea Estates Ltd. March 2021, Tax Appeals Tribunal, Case no. 65 of 2018

In this ruling Bondo Tea Estates Ltd. challenged an adjustment made by the tax authorities to the price at which green leaf tea was supplied by the applicant to Kijura Tea Company Limited, a related party. The ruling also concerns disallowance of an assessed loss of Shs. 220,985,115. Bondo Tea Estates Ltd. is an out grower of tea which it supplies to an associated company, Kijura Tea Company Limited. In 2018, the tax authorities conducted an audit for FY 2016/2017 which purportedly revealed that the company had under declared its sales (price of 320 compared to range of 500-700) and that it had unreconciled retained earnings and current liabilities. On that basis the tax authorities adjusted the price of the related party transactions and issued an assessment of Shs. 544,409,110 of which Shs. 174,409,650 was principal income tax, Shs. 348,819,302 penalty and Shs. 20,929,158 interest. Bondo Tea Estates Ltd. did not agree with the assessment and filed an appeal with the Tax Appeals Tribunal where the following issues were set down for determination. Whether there was under-declaration of sales by the applicant to the respondent for the financial year ending 31stMarch 2017? Whether the average price adjustment by the respondent is in conformity with the law? Whether there was loss incurred by the applicant for the year ending 31stMarch, 2017 which was not recognized by the respondent? What remedies are available to the parties? Judgement of the Tax Appeals Tribunal The tribunal allowed the appeal of Bondo Tea Estates Ltd. and set aside the assessment issued by the tax authorities in regards of transfer pricing. Excerpt “The question the Tribunal has to ask itself, was the price set by the applicant and its associate, Kijura Tea Company limited, one that could be considered as one between unrelated parties?   In order to understand whether the applicant’s price to Kijura Tea Company was at arm’s length one has to ask how was the price set? The minutes of a tea stakeholders meeting of 7th January 2015 at Toro Club, Fort Portal, exhibit A5 show that it was attended by representatives of all the major green leaf buyers, namely; Mpanga Growers Tea Factory, Kijura Tea Company, Mabale Growers Tea Factory, Rusekere Growers Tea Factory and others. The meeting agreed to reduce the price of green leaf from the current Shs. 350 per kg to Shs, 280 per kg with effect from 16th January 2016 due to the fall in prices at the auction market. The meeting also reduced transport cost from Shs. 100 to Shs. 80 per kg of green leaf. The meeting resolved that stakeholders using the services of transporters should ensure that the prices offered to farmers did not exceed Shs. 280 per kg. By April 2016, 14 months after the price was fixed by the tea factories, the applicant was selling Shs. 320 per kilogram, an increment of Shs. 40. The price of the applicant was above the price set by the different stakeholders. It would have been a different matter if the price was below that set by the stakeholders. One cannot say the applicant’s price to Kijura Tea Company was not at arm’s length.   Further the applicant contended that its price did not include transport charges which varied from where the out growers came from. The applicant contended that the respondent did not state whether the Shs. 500 per kilogram paid to out growers included transport costs. The field report the respondent conducted was on 12th September 2018. The income tax period in issue is April 2016 to March 2017. The prices of tea is not static. One cannot use the price of tea in September 2018 to ascertain the price from April 2016 to March 2017. The prices at the auction market in September 2018 may have increased.  The said inspection report is not signed. Furthermore it does not disclose which unrelated companies and their officials the respondent interacted with. No sale invoices of unrelated companies are attached. Further, the interview was not representative of the local green leaf market, only five out growers were interviewed. The minutes of the stakeholders show that there are more than 5 tea factories in the Toro tea growing region which rely on hundreds of individual out growers for their supply of green leaf. The respondent’s representatives ought to have interviewed out growers selling green leaf to Kijura Tea Company to establish what price they were charging. The representatives only interviewed out growers selling their green leaf to Rusekere Growers Tea Company, McLeod Russell Uganda Limited and Mabale Growers Tea Factory Limited. This would enable establish if the differences between the applicant’s sale price and that of other out growers were not due to distortions arising from factors like transport costs or the quality of green leaf. The report does not state the locations of fields of the five to determine the distance between their fields and the tea factories. The report does not show whether the out growers incurred additional expenses such as transport. The respondent’s failure to take these factors into account substantially affect the credibility of the field inspection report. From the evidence before us, we have failed to find sufficient justification for the adjustment by the respondent of the applicant’s sales price. We accordingly find that there was no under-declaration by the applicant of its sales of green leaf to Kijura Tea Company limited for the financial year 2016/2017. We also find that the average price adjustment by the respondent was, for the above reasons, not in conformity with the law.” Click here for other translation Uganda vs Kijura Tea Company Limited ITAT Case no 65 of 2018 ...

Uganda vs East African Breweries International Ltd. July 2020, Tax Appeals Tribunal, Case no. 14 of 2017

East African Breweries International Ltd (applicant) is a wholly owned subsidiary of East African Breweries Limited, and is incorporated in Kenya. East African Breweries International Ltd was involved in developing the markets of the companies in countries that did not have manufacturing operations. The company did not carry out marketing services in Uganda but was marketing Ugandan products outside Uganda. After sourcing customers, they pay to the applicant. A portion is remitted to Uganda Breweries Limited and East African Breweries International Ltd then adds a markup on the products obtained from Uganda Breweries Limited sold to customers in other countries. East African Breweries International Ltd would pay a markup of 7.5 % to Uganda Breweries and then sell the items at a markup of 70 to 90%. In July 2015 the tax authorities (respondent) audited Uganda Breweries Limited, also a subsidiary of East African Breweries Limited, and found information relating to transactions with the East African Breweries International Ltd for the period May 2008 to June 2015. The tax authorities issued an assessment of income tax of Shs. 9,780,243,983 for the period June 2009 to June 2015 on the ground that East African Breweries International Ltd was resident in Uganda for tax purposes. An appeal was filed by East African Breweries International Ltd where the agreed issues were: 1. Whether the applicant is a taxable person in Uganda under the Income Tax Act? 2. Whether the applicant obtained income from Uganda for the period in issue? 3. What remedies are available to the parties? Judgement of the Tax Appeals Tribunal The tribunal dismissed the appeal of East African Breweries International Ltd and upheld the assessment issued by the tax authorities. Excerpt “From the invoices and dispatch notes tendered in as exhibits, it was not clear who the exporter of the goods was. There was no explanation why the names of the parties were crossed out and replaced with others in some of the invoices and dispatch notes. While the applicant did not have an office or presence in Uganda it was exporting goods. In the absence of satisfactory explanations, the Tribunal would not fault the Commissioner’s powers to re-characterize transactions where there is a tax avoidance scheme. The arrangement may not only be a tax avoidance scheme but also one where the form does not reflect the substance. The markup the applicant was paying Uganda Breweries was extraordinarily low compared to what the applicant was obtaining from its sale to third partied. Once again in the absence of good reasons, the form does not reflect the substance. If the Commissioner re-characterized such transactions, the Tribunal will not fault him or her. The Commissioner cannot be said to have acted grossly irrationally for the Tribunal to set aside the decision. The Tribunal notes that the activities of the group companies were overlapping. It is not clear whether they were actually sharing TIN, premises and staff. The witness who came to testify on behalf of the applicant was from East African Breweries Limited. Despite the applicant selling goods to many countries it does not have an employee or officer to testify on its behalf. The markup of the sale of the goods by Uganda Breweries Limited to the applicant was far lower than that between the applicant and the final consumers in Sudan, Congo and Rwanda. While Uganda Breweries Limited was charging the applicant a markup of 7.5% the applicant was charging its customers 70 to 90%. This is part of a transfer pricing arrangement where the companies are dealing with each other not at arm’s length. The arm’s length principle requires inter-company transactions to conform to a level that would have applied had the transactions taking place between unrelated parties, all other factors remaining the same. Under. S. 90 of the Income Tax Act, in any transaction between associates, the commissioner may distribute, apportion or allocate income, deductions between the associates as is necessary to reflect the income realized by the taxpayer in an arm’s length transaction. An associate is defined in S. 3 of the Income Tax Act. In making any adjustments the commissioner may determine the source of income and the nature of any payment or loss. The transfer pricing arrangement originated in Uganda. The Commissioner apportion taxes according to the income received by the applicant. In Unilever Kenya Limited v CIT Income Tax Appeal No. 753/2003 (High Court of Kenya) Unilever Kenya Limited (UKL) and Unilever Uganda Limited (UUL) were both subsidiaries of Unilever PLC, a UK multinational group. Pursuant to a contract, UKL manufactured goods on behalf of and supplied them to UUL, at a price lower than UKL charged to unrelated parties in its domestic and export sales for identical goods. The Commissioner raised an assessment against UKL in respect of sales made by UKL to UUL on the basis that UKL’s sale to UUL were not at arm’s length prices. In that matter it was held that in the absence of guidelines under Kenya law, the taxpayer was entitled to apply OECD transfer pricing guidelines. In this application, the issue is not about which rules to apply. What the Tribunal can note is that the Commissioner has powers to apportion income on an intergroup company and issue an assessment. In this case the Commissioner chose the applicant over Uganda Breweries Limited. The Tribunal feels that the Commissioner was acting within his discretion and was justified to do so. Taking all the above into consideration, the Tribunal finds that the applicant did not discharge the burden placed on it to prove the respondent ought to have made the decision differently. Click here for other translation 10178_EABLi_Vs_URA (1) ...

US vs Amazon, August 2019, US Court of Appeal Ninth Circut, Case No. 17-72922

In the course of restructuring its European businesses in a way that would shift a substantial amount of income from U.S.-based entities to the European subsidiaries, appellee Amazon.com, Inc. entered into a cost sharing arrangement in which a holding company for the European subsidiaries made a “buy-in†payment for Amazon’s assets that met the regulatory definition of an “intangible.†See 26 U.S.C. § 482. Tax regulations required that the buy-in payment reflect the fair market value of Amazon’s pre-existing intangibles. After the Commissioner of Internal Revenue concluded that the buy-in payment had not been determined at arm’s length in accordance with the transfer pricing regulations, the Internal Revenue Service performed its own calculation, and Amazon filed a petition in the Tax Court challenging that valuation. At issue is the correct method for valuing the preexisting intangibles under the then-applicable transfer pricing regulations. The Commissioner sought to include all intangible assets of value, including “residual-business assets†such as Amazon’s culture of innovcation, the value of workforce in place, going concern value, goodwill, and growth options. The panel concluded that the definition of “intangible†does not include residual-business assets, and that the definition is limited to independently transferrable assets. The Court of Appeal concluded “We therefore agree with the tax court that the former regulatory definition of an “intangible†does not include residualbusiness assets.” The Court thus affirmed the prior decision of the tax court US vs Amazon August 2019 ...

Canada vs. GlaxoSmithKline. October 2012, Supreme Court

The Canadian Supreme Court ruled in the case of GlaxoSmithKline Inc. regarding the intercompany prices established in purchases of ranitidine, the active ingredient used in the anti-ulcer drug Zantac, from a related party during years 1990 through 1993. The Supreme Court partially reversed an earlier determination by the Tax Court, upholding a determination by the Federal Court of Appeals in its conclusion that if other transactions are relevant in determining whether transfer prices are reasonable, these transactions should be taken into account. However, the Supreme Court did not determine whether the transfer pricing method used by GlaxoSmithKline Inc. was reasonable, and instead remitted the matter back to the Tax Court. Canada_Glaxo_Supreme-Court ...

US vs NESTLE HOLDINGS INC, July 1998, Court of Appeal, 2nd Circuit, Docket Nos 96-4158 and 96-4192

In this case, experts had utilized the relief-from-royalty method in the valuation of trademarks. On this method the Court noted: “In our view, the relief-from-royalty method necessarily undervalues trademarks. The fair market value of a trademark is the price a willing purchaser would have paid a willing seller to buy the mark…The relief-from-royalty model does not accurately estimate the value to a purchaser of a trademark. Royalty models are generally employed to estimate an infringer’s profit from its misuse of a patent or trademark… Resort to a royalty model may seem appropriate in such cases because it estimates fairly the cost of using a trademark… However, use of a royalty model in the case of a sale is not appropriate because it is the fair market value of a trademark, not the cost of its use, that is at issue. A relief-from-royalty model fails to capture the value of all of the rights of ownership, such as the power to determine when and where a mark may be used, or moving a mark into or out of product lines. It does not even capture the economic benefit in excess of royalty payments that a licensee generally derives from using a mark. Ownership of a mark is more valuable than a license because ownership carries with it the power and incentive both to put the mark to its most valued use and to increase its value. A licensee cannot put the mark to uses beyond the temporal or other limitations of a license and has no reason to take steps to increase the value of a mark where the increased value will be realized by the owner. The Commissioner’s view, therefore, fundamentally misunderstands the nature of trademarks and the reasons why the law provides for exclusive rights of ownership in a mark. Given the shortcomings of the relief-from-royalty methodology, the Tax Court erred when it adopted the Commissioner’s trademark valuations. The Tax Court is instructed to examine alternate methods of determining the fair market value of the trademarks in question.” NESTLE HOLDINGS INC v CIR July 31 1998 2nd Circuit Docket Nos 96-4158 and 96-4192 ...

Georgia Pacific Corp vs. United States Plywood Corp, May 1970

This case is about valuation (not transfer pricing as such) and is commonly referred to in international valuation practice. In this decisions, the following 15 factors were relied upon to determine the type of monetary payments that would compensate for a patent infringement: 1. The royalties received by the licensor for licensing the intangible, proving or tending to prove an established royalty. 2. The rates paid by the licensee for the use of other similar intangibles. 3. The nature and scope of the license, such as whether it is exclusive or nonexclusive, restricted or non-restricted in terms of territory or customers. 4. The licensor’s policy of maintaining its intangible monopoly by licensing the use of the invention only under special conditions designed to preserve the monopoly. 5. The commercial relationship between the licensor and licensees, such as whether they are competitors in the same territory in the same line of business or whether they are inventor and promoter. 6. The effect of selling the intangible in promoting sales of other licensor’s products; the existing value of the invention to the licensor as a generator of sales of other products that do not include the intangible and the extent of such derivative or “convoyed†sales. 7. The duration of the intangible (patent) and the term of the license. 8. The established profitability of the product that include the intangible, its commercial success and its current popularity. 9. The utility and advantages of the intangible over any old modes or devices that had been used. 10. The nature of the intangible, its character in the commercial embodiment owned and produced by the licensor, and the benefits to those who used it. 11. The extent to which the infringer used the invention and any evidence probative of the value of that use. 12. The portion of the profit or selling price that is customary in the particular business or in comparable businesses. 13. The portion of the realizable profit that should be credited to the intangible as distinguished from any other elements, manufacturing process, business risks or significant features or improvements added by the infringer. 14. The opinion testimony of qualified experts. 15. The amount that Georgia-Pacific and a licensee would have agreed upon at the time the infringement began if they had reasonably and voluntarily tried to reach an agreement. Some of the above factors may not apply systematically. Also, if such reasoning were to be relied upon, it would need to be applied in light of the issues at stake (proportionality). US vs Georgia-Pacific-Corp.-v.-United-States-Plywood-Corp.-318-F.-Supp.-1116-S.D.N.Y.-1970 ...