ARTICLE · 06 MAY 2002

239. New Deal For German Transfer Pricing

KPMG Germany

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Dr. Alexander Vögele and William Bader, KPMG Frankfurt

The following article first appeared in International Tax Review, February
2002, pp. 22 ff. An annotated version of the same article appeared in
Tax Planning International Transfer Pricing, March 2002.

For editorial cut-off date, disclaimer, and notice of copyright see end of this article.

1. FTC judgement of 17 October 2001

The German Federal Tax Court (FTC) judgement of 17 October 2001 represents the most important decision to date on German transfer pricing law (judgement of 17 October 2001 – I R 103/00 – DB 2001, 2474). The new judgement decides an appeal of a December 1998 decision by the Düsseldorf Tax Court (judgement of 8 December 1998 - 6 K 3661/93 - IStR 1999, 311) that attracted attention primarily because of the lower court's rejection of the use of so-called secret comparables in transfer pricing litigation (see

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