Arcotia Hatsidimitris - International Tax Dialogue

ANNEX C – 95
Annex C: France
Getting off to a good start: the approach in France
Introduction
International issues and transfer pricing in particular are a major audit target for the French tax
administration (la Direction general des Finances publiques).
la Direction general des Finances publiques recognises that, due to the complexity of transfer
pricing issues, transfer pricing audits require highly technical skills and special measures (training,
documentation, private databases access).
For reasons of efficiency and legal certainty, in 2008, the Central Office decided that transfer
pricing audits would be performed by national and inter-regional tax audit directorates. The large
companies tax audit directorate (Direction des Vérifications Nationales et Internationales - DVNI)
deals with the majority of transfer pricing cases as it is in charge of the audit of main groups and big
companies.
To optimise resources, two options have been proposed to these audit directorates:
• creating dedicated services that will be in charge of the most significant transfer pricing
cases; or
• creating a team of transfer pricing experts that can help general tax auditors on the transfer
pricing aspects of their case.
The DVNI chose the second option and has a team of about ten experts. As a consequence,
transfer pricing audits can take various forms:
• a general tax auditor may conduct his audit alone or with other general tax auditors; or
• a general tax auditor may conduct his audit with the assistance of a transfer pricing expert
working for him; or
• several tax audit services (and also several tax auditors in charge of their own audit) work in
co-ordination.
For example, tax audit services in the same directorate or sometimes in different ones can come
together to define a common strategy of transfer pricing control by the action of auditing several
companies working in the same economic area or in the same group, in the same timeframe. That sort
of operation can gather a lot of information that then needs to be considered carefully, which can take
some time, before a particular audit can begin. When it is the case that a general tax auditor also needs
the help of a transfer pricing expert, agreed timeframes with that expert are necessary to ensure the
expert’s availability.
DEALING EFFECTIVELY WITH THE CHALLENGES OF TRANSFER PRICING © OECD 2012