Centre for Tax Policy and Administration
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
By email to transferpricing@oecd.org
Re: Business Roundtable comments on OECD public consultation on “Pillar One - Amount B”
Dear Sir/Madam, Business Roundtable welcomes the OECD’s commitment to working multilaterally and with the private sector to ensure sound tax policies and straightforward tax administration, which are essential to protecting investment and economic growth.
On behalf of more than 230 chief executive officers of America's leading companies, Business Roundtable is pleased to submit comments in response to the OECD’s public consultation document of July 17, 2023 on the proposed Amount B rules. We comment in our capacity as a business association.
1. Executive Summary
Business Roundtable welcomes the efforts of the Inclusive Framework (IF) to provide a simplified and streamlined approach to pricing in-country baseline marketing and distribution activities. We believe that Alternative A (that is, an approach that does not require a separate qualitative scoping criterion to identify and exclude nonbaseline contributions) provides the best means for advancing the tax certainty objectives of Amount B. Requiring a separate qualitative scoping criterion under Alternative B would introduce subjective judgments and, thereby, create uncertainty for taxpayers, contribute to transfer pricing controversies, limit the scope of the simplified and streamlined approach and frustrate efforts to achieve the policy objectives of Amount B.
Business Roundtable supports the application of the Amount B rules, as a safe harbor, both to the wholesale distribution of digital goods (provided that ‘wholesale’ is not too narrowly interpreted) and to the marketing and distribution of services. Failure to provide a simplified and streamlined approach for the distribution of services would exclude a considerable segment of the global economy from the benefits of Amount B.