Transfer Pricing 2025

AUSTRIA Law and Practice Contributed by: Raphael Holzinger, Julia Hochreiter, Matthias Jancura and Claudia Synek, Grant Thornton Austria

prises, this must be given full consideration as previously unrecognised operating income or an overstated operating expense. This will inevita - bly have repercussions on the taxable business assets and thus lead to secondary adjustments. The regulations pertaining to secondary adjust - ments within the ATPG are largely consistent with the OECD Guidelines.

(a) the Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement on Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information; and (b) the Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement on the Exchange of Country- By-Country Reports; and • the Multilateral Convention to Implement Tax Treaty Related Measures to Prevent Base Erosion and Profit Shifting. The ATA publish a list of jurisdictions with which proper tax information exchange exists on an annual basis. 6.2 Joint Audits In principle, Austria is willing to engage in joint audits. Cross-border co-operation between tax administrations in the area of transfer pric - ing can take various forms (eg, tax information exchange, secondment of auditors, and joint audit). The legal bases for such co-operation are usually the respective double taxation con - ventions, the Mutual Administrative Assistance Convention, or the Directive on Administrative Co-operation (DAC) in Direct Taxation. In the field of transfer pricing, joint audits repre - sent a pivotal instrument in achieving final clarity on the recognition of the arm’s length nature of transfer prices at the audit level. This approach effectively avoids the intensive and complex appeals and mutual agreement procedures that would otherwise be necessary for all par - ties involved. However, joint audits are seldom applied in Austrian audit practice.

6. Cross-Border Information Sharing 6.1 Sharing Taxpayer Information

Austria has a plethora of treaties in place – the list of which is regularly updated by the Aus - trian Ministry of Finance. The aforementioned list includes links to the treaty texts. The following agreements have been entered into by Austria with other jurisdictions: • double taxation conventions regarding income and capital with approx 90 jurisdic - tions; • tax information exchange agreements with approximately seven jurisdictions (as there is no double taxation convention in place with those jurisdictions); and • double taxation conventions regarding inherit - ance and gift tax with approximately ten jurisdictions. Further, Austria entered into the following multi - lateral agreements: • the EU Arbitration Convention; • the Convention on Mutual Administra - tive Assistance in Tax Matters (the “Mutual Administrative Assistance Convention” ) • multilateral competent authority agreements, such as:

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