What is an APA?

An APA is an agreement between the Central Board of Direct Taxes and any person, which determines, in advance, the arm's length price or specifies the manner of the determination of arm's length price (or both), in relation to an international transaction. The APA process is voluntary and will supplement appeal and other Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) mechanism for resolving transfer pricing dispute. The term of APA can be a maximum of five years.

The APA scheme notifies three types of APA: unilateral, bilateral and multilateral. The choice is on the applicant to choose a particular type of APA at the time of making the application. Unilateral APA is an agreement between the Board and the applicant and this process does not involve any agreement with the treaty partner. In bilateral and multilateral APA request, the applicant is required to make an application with the Competent Authority of India as well as the Competent Authority of the other country.

Advantages

The APA scheme has many advantages. It will provide tax certainty with regard to determination of arm's length price of the international transaction with respect to which the APA has been entered into, reduce the risk of potential double taxation through bilateral or multilateral APA, reduce compliance cost by eliminating the risk of transfer pricing audit and resolving long drawn and time consuming litigation and other dispute resolution process and alleviate the burden of record keeping as the taxpayer knows in advance the required documentation to be maintained to substantiate the agreed terms and conditions of the agreement.

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