Unpacking the transfer pricing controversy in the Asia Pacific

Australia remains among the most active and well-resourced transfer pricing controversy environments in the region. The defining recent development is the High Court's August 2025 decision in Commissioner of Taxation v PepsiCo Inc [2025] HCA 30, in which a 4:3 majority found for the taxpayer. Payments made by an Australian bottler for beverage concentrate did not contain an “embedded royalty” subject to royalty withholding tax, and the diverted profits tax (DPT) did not apply because no relevant tax benefit arose under the alternative postulate.

The decision – the first substantive judicial consideration of the DPT – provides important guidance on the circumstances in which payments for products supplied under arrangements that also confer IP rights may constitute consideration for a royalty, as well as on the identification of an alternative postulate for DPT purposes. The narrow majority, and the subsequent decision impact statement from the Australian Tax Office (ATO), nevertheless suggest continued scrutiny of embedded royalties, particularly for software and technology distribution arrangements under the ATO's recent ruling TR 2026/2.

Beyond litigation, the ATO's Tax Avoidance Taskforce continues to prioritise intangibles migration and cross-border DEMPE arrangements (PCG 2021/4 and PCG 2024/1), related-party financing (following its earlier wins in Chevron and settlement outcomes in other financing matters), and inbound distribution margins. 

Structural changes have added new fronts: the rewritten earnings-based thin capitalisation rules and the debt deduction creation rules apply alongside transfer pricing, and public CbC reporting has raised the reputational stakes. 

Australia operates a mature APA and MAP programme and remains a frequent bilateral APA counterparty for India, Japan and the United States, though taxpayers report longer APA timelines and greater ATO selectivity at the pre-lodgment stage. Justified trust reviews (Top 100 and Top 1,000 programmes) continue to pull transfer pricing positions into near-continuous review for large groups.

State Taxation Administration of The People’s Republic of China (STA) runs one of the most comprehensive anti-avoidance tax administration frameworks across APAC. Its practical tax collection and administration has shifted from case-by-case investigation towards data-driven risk management mode.

China’s current transfer pricing legal framework includes:

• the special tax adjustment provisions of the Enterprise Income Tax Law
• the three-tier documentation rules in STA Announcement [2016] No. 42
• the investigation, adjustment and MAP rules in Announcement [2017] No. 6.

This framework is now ‌implemented based on the Golden Tax Phase IV platform, which links:

• annual related-party transaction forms
• CbCr data
• customs declarations documents
• foreign exchange records
• outbound payment filings. 

Under the STA’s “management, service and investigation” approach, most taxpayers are firstly involved in the controversy not through a formal transfer pricing audit but the profit-level monitoring: China tax authorities have issued the ‌risk alert letter‌ or ‌self-inspection notice‌, requiring the taxpayers to explain why the profit margins fall below the reasonable range. In many cases, the taxpayers need to make transfer pricing self-adjustments. Formal transfer pricing special tax adjustment cases for inbound multinational taxpayers are fewer, which are terminated through mutual negotiation and the transfer pricing litigation remains rare.

The top transfer pricing audit priorities are consistent and stable as before. 

First, limited-risk contract manufacturers, distributors and contract research and development (R&D) centres are expected to earn stable positive returns, and the STA has historically taken a strong position that entities characterised as undertaking routine or limited functions should generally earn stable positive returns, including in years affected by weak demand, overcapacity and tariff-driven supply chain shifts.

Second, outbound intra-group service fees and royalty fees should apply the benefit test: charges for shareholder activities, duplicative services or services conferring no benefit results in full or partial disallowance, and royalties paid to the entities which only own the legal title without contributing to DEMPE functions may be denied and it will also trigger withholding income tax and value-added tax implications. 

Third, the STA continues to assert China-specific factors – location savings, market premium and locally developed marketing intangibles and conducts key reviews on the group restructurings in which functions, customers or orders are relocated from China to other APAC regions without reasonable compensation. The regulatory rules for global taxpayers in China are increasing: they are expected to charge arm’s length returns for headquarters services, guarantees or technical activities provided to the foreign subsidiaries. In this regard, China parent companies have become the cross-border tax controversy party in other APAC countries such as Vietnam and Indonesia.

For preventing and resolving double taxation, China bilateral advance pricing arrangements (BAPAs) have become mainstream tools. According to the STA’s China APA Annual Report (2024), 39 APAs were signed in 2024, 27 of them were bilateral, and the cumulative number of BAPAs is 170, exceeding the number of unilateral APAs which is 165. 

According to the Annual Report, most of the signatories of the APAs are APAC countries and the European signatories of the APAs are increasing. 
In addition, the proportion of intangible asset related-party transactions in APA cases continues to rise. Timelines remain a constraint – nearly half of BAPAs take more than 24 months – although the STA has introduced a fast-track route for renewals with minor changes, and a simplified procedure for unilateral APAs is available for the qualifying taxpayers under Announcement [2021] No. 24. 

The MAP mechanism is mature and is well used for the corresponding adjustments, especially in Hong Kong and Singapore. 

The key takeaways for multinational taxpayers are as follows: 

• retain contemporaneous documentation,
• make sure they are consistent with annual tax filing, customs data and foreign exchange filing
• for significant recurring cross-border transactions, apply for a BAPA which is regarded as the most effective approach to resolve double taxation.

Hong Kong’s transfer pricing regime, enacted in 2018, has developed into an increasingly active area of tax enforcement. 
There are increasing enquiries issued by the HK Inland Revenue Department (IRD), often extensive and sophisticated, with focus on cross-border related-party arrangements, such as:

• service charges
• procurement and sourcing remuneration
• financing arrangements
• returns from intangibles. 

There is also increasing scrutiny on the interaction between offshore/onshore profits with transfer pricing. Enquiries often go beyond transfer pricing documentation and put greater emphasis on the underlying evidence, facts and conduct of the relevant parties. One common example is that the IRD picks up information from Employer Tax Returns BIR56A and BIR56B to assess whether the functional characterisation of a Hong Kong entity is consistent with the activities of its personnel.

Hong Kong entities are also frequently affected by counterparty transfer pricing adjustments arising from audits in Mainland China, Vietnam, Korea and other jurisdictions. These adjustments can result in economic double taxation. As cross-border audits become more common, taxpayers are increasingly considering MAPs under the relevant tax treaty to seek corresponding relief and mitigate double taxation.

The IRD’s published MAP guidance adopts a two-stage process. It first considers whether relief can be provided unilaterally before proceeding to bilateral competent authority negotiations where unilateral resolution is not feasible. APAs, including unilateral, bilateral and multilateral APAs, are also available for taxpayers seeking greater certainty for material cross-border arrangements.

With the implementation of the global minimum tax and Hong Kong minimum top-up tax for fiscal years beginning on or after 1 January 2025, groups with Hong Kong hub structures face heightened pressure to ensure that profit allocation is supportable under both the arm’s length principle and the Pillar Two framework.

India continues to be one of APAC’s most active transfer pricing jurisdictions, with disputes before the Dispute Resolution Panel, Income-tax Appellate Tribunal and higher courts covering recurring issues such as:

• advertising, marketing and promotion expenditure and marketing intangibles
• margins earned by captive IT / ITeS (IT-enabled services) and R&D service providers
• management and intra-group service charges
• financial transactions including guarantees and loans
• royalties and valuation of intangibles. 

At the same time, the direction of policy has increasingly shifted towards dispute prevention and greater certainty through APAs, Safe Harbour and MAPs.

India’s APA programme has continued to expand rapidly. India’s Central Board of Direct Taxes concluded a record 219 APAs in FY 2025-26, taking the cumulative number of APAs signed since the programme began to 1,034 comprising 750 unilateral and 284 bilateral APAs.

Of the agreements concluded during FY 2025–26, 84 were bilateral APAs (up from 65 in previous FY 2024-25), also the highest annual number to date, involving 13 treaty partners including the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Australia, France and Sweden. 

India also concluded its first-ever bilateral APAs with France, Ireland, Indonesia and Sweden during FY 2025-26. This followed the earlier record of 174 APAs concluded in FY 2024-25 and reflects an increasingly established preference among taxpayers for prospective certainty rather than prolonged controversy.

There have been recent legislative changes in India which reinforce this trend. For example, the Finance Act 2025 introduced a multi-year (block) transfer pricing framework under which, subject to prescribed conditions and the taxpayer exercising the relevant option, the arm’s length price determined for a transaction in one year may also be applied to similar transactions undertaken during the following two years. This is intended to reduce repetitive annual transfer pricing examinations where the underlying facts and transactions remain substantially unchanged.

The dispute resolution framework was further strengthened by the Finance Act 2026, particularly for the technology sector. Software development services, ITeS, knowledge process outsourcing and contract R&D relating to software development have been consolidated into a single category: information technology services, with a uniform safe harbour of cost plus mark-up of 15.5%

The turnover threshold for accessing safe harbour has been substantially increased from INR₹3bn to INR ₹20bn, and the regime is moving towards a system-driven, automated approval process. Once opted for, the qualifying IT service providers may continue under the safe harbour framework for up to five years. 

The Indian Government has also announced a fast-track Unilateral APA process for IT services, with an intended completion period of two years, extendable by six months at the taxpayer’s request. Separate safe-harbour measures have also been introduced for qualifying related-party datacentre services in India.

MAP remains an important parallel avenue for eliminating double taxation arising from transfer pricing adjustments. India’s published MAP framework continues to target resolution of cases within an average period of 24 months and its competent authority relationships with major treaty partners have matured considerably alongside the BAPA programme with the United States of America, Japan, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Australia and Korea. 

Despite this stronger certainty framework, transfer pricing audit activity remains significant. Taxpayers should continue to expect detailed scrutiny of the commercial substance and pricing of related-party arrangements, particularly where transactions involve intangibles, business restructurings, financing arrangements, intra-group services or material changes in functions, assets and risks. 

In summary: India’s transfer pricing landscape is increasingly characterised by a dual-track transfer pricing environment: continued scrutiny of related party transactions and active enforcement, alongside an expanding framework of APA, MAP, safe harbour and multi-year arm’s length pricing determination aimed at enhancing certainty and resolving disputes.

Indonesia’s Directorate General of Taxes (DGT) is among the most assertive auditors in ASEAN, and its framework was consolidated in Minister of Finance Regulation PMK-172/2023, which brings together the arm’s length principle, documentation, MAP and APA rules. 

Key compliance pressure points include:

• the ex-ante requirement (pricing must be set and supported at the time of the transaction)
• the obligation to have master file and local file available within four months of year end
• a strict existence, benefit and arm’s length test for services, royalties, intragroup loan, cost contribution arrangements, business restructuring, other financial transactions and transfers of assets - seven transactions that must clear this preliminary stage, evidenced in the local file, before any pricing method applies.

Audits are frequently triggered by tax refund claims, persistent losses, low margins relative to DGT benchmarks and SP2DK ‘please explain’ letters. Common adjustments involve:

• rejection of comparables
• selection of TP method
• disagreement in existence and economic benefit for service charges and royalties
• dispute on secondary adjustment. 

What raises the stakes is what follows the primary adjustment: PMK-172 treats the difference as a deemed dividend, called secondary adjustment, subject to withholding tax, and separately allows a VAT adjustment on the seller without a matching input credit for the buyer. Accordingly, a primary transfer pricing adjustment may give rise to additional withholding tax consequences through the secondary adjustment mechanism and, in relevant circumstances, separate VAT consequences. The secondary adjustment is waived where the taxpayer accepts the assessment or repatriates the funds.

Indonesian adjustments often leave the counterparty country unconvinced, and that shows up directly in the MAP queue: transfer pricing disputes made up 42 of the 53 cases open at the start of 2024 and 38 of the 59 still open at the end of it. MAP has become an essential remedy, and PMK-172 helpfully clarifies the interaction between MAP, domestic objections and appeals, allowing MAP to proceed in parallel with objection, appeal and judicial review. 

Indonesia closed 26 MAP cases in 2024 against 32 started and resolved them in an average of 20.72 months, inside the OECD’s 24-month standard, with no pre-2016 cases left and only one case in inventory older than six years.

The APA programme (unilateral, bilateral and now multilateral, with roll-back possibilities) is increasingly credible, and the recent record bears that out: Indonesia granted every one of the 20 bilateral APA cases it closed in 2024, with none rejected, while taking in 20 new applications and holding inventory steady. 

The range of treaty partners willing to conclude bilateral agreements with Indonesia continues to widen, a sign of growing competent authority engagement. Agreements granted in 2024 took an average of 42 months, so the covered transactions have to be chosen with care and the application filed well before the exposure matures.

For material recurring transactions, an APA can materially reduce the risk of primary transfer pricing adjustments and associated consequential tax exposures for the covered years, although the time required to conclude an agreement should be weighed against the level and duration of the underlying controversy risk.

Japan’s National Tax Agency (NTA) takes a selective but high-impact approach to transfer pricing enforcement. In the 2024 programme year (July 2024 to June 2025), it made 107 transfer pricing adjustments totalling JPY ¥39.9bn of additional income, compared with 125 cases and JPY ¥51.2bn in the prior year. 

Current areas of scrutiny include intangibles (including the hard-to-value intangibles rules and the discounted cash flow method available under the 2019 reforms), intra-group services and related-party financing, where scrutiny of intercompany loans and guarantees has stepped up since the NTA updated its administrative guidelines on financial transactions in 2022. 

The most significant recent development is a new record-keeping requirement introduced by Japan’s 2026 tax reform. For fiscal years beginning on or after 1 April 2026, where contracts, invoices and other existing records do not adequately show how charges were determined, Japanese companies must prepare or obtain supplementary documentation for royalties, management services and other specified services received from related parties by the tax return due date, and retain it for seven years. The rules extend to domestic as well as cross-border transactions, and non-compliance may give grounds for revoking a company’s blue-form tax return approval.

Japan remains a leading ‘certainty’ jurisdiction. It introduced one of the world’s earliest APA programmes in 1987, and demand continues to grow, with APA requests rising to 175 in the 2024 programme year. Of the 250 new MAP cases that year, 231 related to transfer pricing; however, the large majority (194) were bilateral APA requests, with only 37 arising from transfer pricing adjustments. 

Cases stemming from adjustments against Japanese groups’ Asian subsidiaries remain a feature of the caseload, and in June 2026 the NTA revised its MAP administrative guidelines to reflect the outcome of its BEPS Action 14 peer review. The NTA has also confirmed that Japan will not implement Amount B (the simplified approach to baseline marketing and distribution) for the time being. 

Key takeaways for taxpayers: Japanese examinations are won or lost on contemporaneous evidence of functions, decision-making and pricing rationale, and bilateral APAs remain the most reliable protection for material flows.

Korea's National Tax Service (NTS) maintains an active and sophisticated transfer pricing enforcement programme. Audit cycles for large foreign-invested companies are regular and intense, with recurring adjustment themes including:

• management service fees and cost allocations (where the benefit test is applied strictly and documentary expectations are high)
• royalty and the recharacterisation of payments, intercompany loans and guarantee fees
• the margins of Korean distributors and contract manufacturers within global value chains. 

The NTS makes extensive use of information exchange and is attentive to consistency between transfer pricing positions, corporate income tax filings and withholding tax filings.

The counterweight to audit aggression is a well-functioning certainty infrastructure. Korea's APA / MAP programme is long-established, and its competent authority is an active and generally effective APA / MAP negotiator. As such, Korea features prominently in bilateral APA and MAP statistics with the United States, China, Japan, France, Germany. 

Taxpayers facing an NTS adjustment should evaluate MAP early: domestic appeals in Korea can be pursued in parallel, but unrelieved double taxation is common where the foreign counterparty jurisdiction is not engaged promptly.

New Zealand's Inland Revenue takes a risk-based, engagement-led approach to transfer pricing, anchored by the annual international questionnaire and other request campaigns issued to foreign-owned groups and by published ‘checkpoint’ expectations for common structures. The most visible being its wholesale distributor, royalty and interest rate benchmarks, under which foreign-owned companies reporting weak margins, loss-making or comparably high outbound payments can expect follow-up. 

Priority risk areas in New Zealand include: 

• inbound related-party debt (governed by the distinctive “restricted transfer pricing” rules, which mandate conservative borrower assumptions for pricing cross-border related-party loans above NZD$10m)
• payments for intangibles and services
• supply chain restructurings
• entities reporting sustained losses. 

Recent guidance has emphasised the need for local customisation of TP documentation and careful selection of comparables, including consideration of the relevance of Australasian comparables to New Zealand conditions. Formal litigation remains less common; most matters are resolved through pre-audit engagement, negotiated adjustments or APAs. Inland Revenue actively promotes its APA programme – including a streamlined process for smaller unilateral APAs – as its preferred route to certainty, and New Zealand's MAP caseload, while small, is resolved efficiently, with bilateral APAs concluded with partners including Australia, Japan, Korea, China, the United States and, recently, India. 

For inbound groups, the pragmatic path is to align with published checkpoints or be prepared to substantiate departures with robust functional and economic analysis.

The Philippines is a jurisdiction in transition from framework-building to active enforcement. The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) has assembled its toolkit over recent years – transfer pricing audit guidelines (RAMO 1-2019), the Related Party Transactions disclosure return (BIR Form 1709 with attached documentation for covered taxpayers), and MAP procedures (RR 10-2022) – and transfer pricing considerations are now embedded in the BIR's audit selection criteria, with its 2026 audit programme (RMO 1-2026) identifying related-party transaction profiles, persistent losses, incentive-enjoying entities and significant exempt or zero-rated revenue streams as triggers for examination. 

Audit issues typically blend transfer pricing with ‘characterisation’ and withholding tax issues: the BIR frequently scrutinises material outbound related-party charges, including service fees and payments potentially characterised as royalties, with associated withholding tax and deductibility consequences – a pattern that generates double taxation, particularly on the Singapore-Philippines corridor.

The Philippines remains one of the few ASEAN jurisdictions without an operational APA programme. APAs are recognised in principle under the 2013 transfer pricing regulations, but implementing rules have yet to be issued, leaving MAP as the principal treaty remedy.

Taxpayers should treat contemporaneous documentation, benefit evidence for intra-group charges and consistent contract-conduct alignment as their first line of defence, and should preserve MAP access early when assessments issue, given treaty time limits.

Singapore remains one of APAC's more cooperative transfer pricing jurisdictions. However, controversy can arise where foreign tax authorities seek to reallocate profits from Singapore-based principal, hub, financing and regional headquarters structures. Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) audit activity also focuses on whether profits are aligned with substance, decision-making and value creation, particularly where material related-party transactions are involved.

For many multinational groups, the greater controversy risk still arises from overseas audits, particularly as tax authorities across Asia continue to scrutinise returns earned by Singapore-based regional structures. This has increased the risk of double taxation and elevated the importance of effective dispute-resolution mechanisms.

Against this backdrop, Singapore has established itself as one of the region's leading jurisdictions for transfer pricing dispute resolution. Singapore's APA programme (unilateral, bilateral and multilateral) is heavily subscribed by multinational groups looking for certainty on their tax structures. Also, through its well-regarded MAP programme, IRAS actively promotes bilateral engagement between competent authorities to resolve cross-border disputes and provide greater certainty to taxpayers. Recent enhancements to the MAP framework, including the recognition of protective MAP filings, further demonstrate Singapore's pragmatic approach by allowing taxpayers to preserve access to treaty relief while simultaneously pursuing domestic remedies or awaiting the outcome of foreign proceedings.

With Pillar Two now effective in Singapore, including the domestic top-up tax, changing incentive economics are prompting some multinational groups to revisit the allocation of profits to Singapore hub structures. 

Where material changes are contemplated, taxpayers should consider whether proactive certainty mechanisms, including bilateral or multilateral APAs where appropriate, can mitigate the risk of replacing one source of controversy with another. APAs are increasingly being viewed as a proactive certainty mechanism rather than simply a dispute-resolution tool.

Taiwan’s transfer pricing regime continues to align with the post-BEPS OECD framework, including risk-control analysis, DEMPE concepts and hard-to-value intangibles principles. Supported by the master file, local file and CbCR documentation regime, the tax authorities have increasingly adopted a risk-based and data-driven approach to audits. Key risk indicators include sustained losses or low margins in Taiwan despite overall group profitability, significant transactions with related parties in low-tax jurisdictions, and insufficient arm’s length remuneration for intangibles, intra-group services and financing arrangements.

In 2026, Taiwan’s tax authorities further highlighted the absence of appropriate royalties, service fees, interest and guarantee fees as recurring transfer pricing issues. They also emphasised that transfer pricing should generally be analysed on a transaction-by-transaction basis; an entity-level profitability test alone may not establish that all controlled transactions are at arm’s length. Increased attention has also been given to year-end transfer pricing adjustments, particularly consistency across corporate income tax, VAT and customs. For imported goods, adjustments should generally be considered across the full year’s imports rather than selectively applied to individual customs declarations.

Unilateral and bilateral APAs are available, while MAP may be used where an applicable income tax treaty is in force. Taiwan currently has 36 comprehensive income tax agreements in force, but the absence of an effective comprehensive income tax treaty with the United States and the fact that the cross-strait tax agreement has not entered into force continue to limit MAP access for certain important transaction corridors. 

Robust upfront pricing policies, transaction-level analysis and contemporaneous documentation therefore remain critical to managing transfer pricing controversy risk in Taiwan.

Thailand's transfer pricing regime, in force since 2019, has matured quickly. The mandatory transfer pricing disclosure form filed with the annual return gives the Revenue Department a rich, analytics-ready dataset for risk selection, and taxpayers must produce local file documentation within 60 days of a request, with an extension of up to 180 days available only upon the first request from the Revenue Department. Master file and CbCR requirements apply to larger groups. Audit activity has increased markedly, with characteristic focus areas including management and technical service fees (benefit and substance testing), royalties, persistent losses – particularly in incentive-holding manufacturers whose privileges have expired – business restructurings, and intra-group loans and guarantees. 

In practice, transfer pricing issues may also arise during corporate income tax refund reviews, where the Revenue Department examines related-party transactions, including purchases and sales of goods, management fees and other intercompany charges. Taxpayers are expected to demonstrate that these transactions are conducted on an arm’s length basis and are supported by clear commercial explanations and appropriate documentary evidence. The review may extend beyond the financial statements, tax returns and intercompany agreements to the substance of the underlying transactions, including whether the goods or services were actually supplied or performed.

 Where the pricing is not arm’s length, the Revenue Department may make transfer pricing adjustments, such as increasing taxable income or adjusting deductible expenses, as appropriate. Where the underlying transactions or services cannot be substantiated, the relevant expenses may also be challenged, potentially resulting in additional corporate income tax and, where applicable, withholding tax liabilities. Assessments can carry the additional sting of deemed income and withholding tax exposure alongside primary adjustments, and disputes over the characterisation of service payments are common.

On the certainty side, Thailand offers BAPAs (unilateral APAs are not available) under the Revenue Department’s published guidance. The Revenue Department also provides guidance on MAPs, including the requirements for treaty-based cases.

Key takeaway:

In practice, taxpayers should be prepared to substantiate their transfer pricing policies with robust documentation and Thai-specific comparables analysis, as the tax authorities may challenge the taxpayer’s pricing methodology, comparables, or conclusions and undertake their own analysis when determining the arm’s length price. Early engagement with the tax authorities and timely consideration of MAP eligibility and filing deadlines are important where cross-border double taxation may arise.

Vietnam is arguably ASEAN's most active transfer pricing audit environment, with the tax authorities running sustained campaigns against both foreign-invested and local enterprises with large business scale, business extension but reporting losses or thin margins, and against outbound charges for management fees, royalties and technical services, which are disallowed unless benefit, substance and arm's length pricing are convincingly evidenced. The challenges during the audits raised by the tax authorities are not simply within local file, common obligations, but more tend to pricing rationale, functional profile, benefits received and other taxes and customs nexus.

Vietnam’s regulatory framework has been substantially rebuilt. 

Decree 20/2025/ND-CP (applying from the 2024 tax year) refined the related-party definitions (i.e. lenders, guarantors operating under Law on credit institutions with certain conditions) and provided transitional relief on non-deductible interest related to credit institutions. 

Decree 255/2026/ND-CP – effective 1 July 2026 and applying from the 2026 tax year – replaced the prior decrees entirely, introducing data source hierarchy, giving priority to Vietnamese public and official sources, followed by commercial databases and tax management databases, documentation exemption threshold expansion, clarifying CbCR obligations and adding new reassessment triggers, including incorrect related-party disclosures. 

Compared with previous Decrees, the new Decree places greater emphasis on:

• risk-based administration
• pre-audit consultation
• inter-agency data sharing
• voluntary compliance support
• more structured use of tax authority data by introducing industry profit indicators.

Most significantly for controversy, the new Law on Tax Administration establishes a dedicated transfer pricing audit framework: transfer pricing examinations may run up to 40 days (double the standard period), extendable by a further 40 days, and up to two years where information must be obtained from foreign tax authorities – a clear statement of enforcement intent.

The 30% EBITDA interest limitation and the narrowed arm's length range (35th to 75th percentile) continue to drive adjustments mechanically. 

Vietnam's APA regime exists on paper, with approval authority recently streamlined, but concluded APAs remain rare; MAP, administered centrally, is available under Vietnam's broad treaty network and is increasingly the realistic remedy for double taxation on the Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and Korea corridors – provided taxpayers file within treaty deadlines and can present decision-making and substance evidence of audit-grade quality.