A Case Study on International Transfer Prices of Multinational Enterprises: An Analysis of Judicial Precedents

International transfer pricing refers to prices determined internally within the corporate system through intra-firm transactions either between manufacturing departments and international departments, or headquarters and overseas subsidiaries, or among overseas subsidiaries. The international transfer price makes it possible to arbitrarily decide on the transaction price between the related parties through international transactions and to utilize the different tax system (tax rate) of each country, thereby enabling tax avoidance through transfer price manipulation. This not only raises international friction but also causes disputes between tax authorities that have unilaterally reduced tax revenue. In this study, we investigated in the cases of Renault Samsung Korea and GM Korea and the judgments of the Supreme Court and Seoul High Court on international transfer pricing. Moreover, we examined the position of the National Tax Service and the Korea Customs Service on international transfer prices. Lastly, we introduced tax authorities’ countermeasures such as MAP (Mutual Agreement Procedure) and APA (Advance Pricing Arrangement) to solve the international transfer pricing problem.