CBDT enters into seven Advance Pricing Agreements

The Central Board of Direct Taxes has entered into seven Advance Pricing Agreements (APAs) on Tuesday.

The board had signed two bilateral APAs last week with U.K. and Japan.

With this, the total number of APAs entered into by the CBDT has reached 140.

This includes 10 bilateral APAs and 130 unilateral APAs.

In the current financial year, a total of 76 APAs have already been entered into. The CBDT expects more APAs to be concluded and signed before the end of the current fiscal, the board said in a statement on Tuesday.

The APAs entered into over the last week pertain to sectors such as pharma, retail, IT and telecom, banking and finance.

International transactions covered in these agreements include payment of royalty fee, trading in goods, IT Enabled Services, software development services, marketing support services.

The APA Scheme was introduced in the Income-tax Act in 2012 to provide certainty to taxpayers in the domain of transfer pricing by specifying the methods of pricing and setting the prices of international transactions in advance.

It has evinced huge interest from foreign companies and 700 applications have been filed so far.