Overview
Thirty-One Countries Sign Automatic Information Sharing Agreement for Country-by-Country Reporting: The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) announced that the Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement (MCAA) on the Automatic Exchange of Country-by-Country Reports was signed by Australia, Austria, Belgium, Chile, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. The MCAA is intended to enable the implementation of the new transfer pricing reporting standards developed under Action 13 of the OECD’s Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) Action Plan.
India Announces Resolution of More than 100 Transfer Pricing Disputes with US: The Indian Central Board of Direct Taxes announced that it had resolved more than 100 of the approximately 200 past transfer pricing disputes between India and the United States in the information technology (software development) services and information technology enabled services (ITeS) segments. In January 2015, the United States and India announced that they had reached a broad framework agreement for the resolution of such cases. The announcement states that the success of the framework agreement has led to the US opening up its bilateral advanced pricing agreement (APA) program to India and that the US is expected to begin accepting bilateral APA applications shortly. In the past, the IRS had stated that it would accept bilateral APA applications once the disputes under the settlement framework had been resolved.
Miscellaneous Guidance Released: Proposed regulations would modify the nondiscrimination requirements applicable to certain retirement plans that provide additional benefits to a grandfathered group of employees following certain changes in the coverage of a defined benefit plan or a defined benefit plan formula. The proposed regulations also make certain other changes to the nondiscrimination rules that are not limited to these plans.