Factors Affecting International Transfer Pricing of Multinational Enterprises in Korea

외국인투자기업의 국제이전가격 결정에 영향을 미치는 환경 및 기업요인

With the continued globalization of world markets, transfer pricing has become one of the dominant sources of controversy in international taxation. Transfer pricing is the process by which a multinational corporation calculates a price for goods and services that are transferred to affiliated entities. Consider a Korean electronic enterprise that buys supplies from its own subsidiary located in China. How much the Korean parent company pays its subsidiary will determine how much profit the Chinese unit reports in local taxes. If the parent company pays above normal market prices, it may appear to have a poor profit, even if the group as a whole shows a respectable profit margin. In this way, transfer prices impact the taxable income reported in each country in which the multinational enterprise operates. It's importance lies in that around 60% of international trade involves transactions between two related parts of multinationals, according to the OECD. Multinational enterprises (hereafter MEs) exert much effort into utilizing organizational advantages to make global investments. MEs wish to minimize their tax burden. So MEs spend a fortune on economists and accountants to justify transfer prices that suit their tax needs. On the contrary, local governments are not prepared to cope with MEs' powerful financial instruments. Tax authorities in each country wish to ensure that the tax base of any ME is divided fairly. Thus, both tax authorities and MEs have a vested interest in the way in which a transfer price is determined, and this is why MEs' international transfer prices are at the center of disputes concerned with taxation. Transfer pricing issues and practices are sometimes difficult to control for regulators because the tax administration does not have enough staffs with the knowledge and resources necessary to understand them. The authors examine transfer pricing practices to provide relevant resources useful in designing tax incentives and regulation schemes for policy makers. This study focuses on identifying the relevant business and environmental factors that could influence the international transfer pricing of MEs. In this perspective, we empirically investigate how the management perception of related variables influences their choice of international transfer pricing methods. We believe that this research is particularly useful in the design of tax policy. Because it can concentrate on a few selected factors in consideration of the limited budget of the tax administration with assistance of this research. Data is composed of questionnaire responses from foreign firms in Korea with investment balances exceeding one million dollars in the end of 2004. We mailed questionnaires to 861 managers in charge of the accounting departments of each company, resulting in 121 valid responses. Seventy six percent of the sample firms are classified as small and medium sized enterprises with assets below 100 billion Korean won. Reviewing transfer pricing methods, cost-based transfer pricing is most popular showing that 60 firms have adopted it. The market-based method is used by 31 firms, and 13 firms have reported the resale-pricing method. Regarding the nationalities of foreign investors, the Japanese and the Americans constitute most of the sample. Logistic regressions have been performed for statistical analysis. The dependent variable is binary in that whether the method of international transfer pricing is a market-based method or a cost-based method. This type of binary classification is founded on the belief that the market-based method is evaluated as the relatively objective way of pricing compared with the cost-based methods. Cost-based pricing is assumed to give mangers flexibility in transfer pricing decisions. Therefore, local regulatory agencies are thought to prefer market-based pricing over cost-based pricing. Independent variables are composed of eight factors such as corporate tax rate, tariffs, relations with local tax authorities, tax audit, equity ratios of local investors, volume of internal trade, sales volume, and product life cycle. The first four variables are included in the model because taxation lies in the center of transfer pricing disputes. So identifying the impact of these variables in Korean business environments is much needed. Equity ratio is included to represent the interest of local partners. Volume of internal trade was sometimes employed in previous research to check the pricing behavior of managers, so we have followed these footsteps in this paper. Product life cycle is used as a surrogate of competition in local markets. Control variables are firm size and nationality of foreign investors. Firm size is controlled using dummy variables in that whether or not the specific firm is small and medium sized. This is because some researchers report that big firms show different behaviors compared with small and medium sized firms in transfer pricing. The other control variable is also expressed in dummy variable showing if the entrepreneur is the American or not. That's because some prior studies conclude that the American management style is different in that they limit branch manger's freedom of decision. Reviewing the statistical results, we have found that managers prefer the cost-based method over the market-based method as the importance of corporate taxes and tariffs increase. This result means that managers need flexibility to lessen the tax burden when they feel taxes are important. They also prefer the cost-based method as the product life cycle matures, which means that they support subsidiaries in local market competition using cost-based transfer pricing. On the contrary, as the relationship with local tax authorities becomes more important, managers prefer the market-based method. That is because market-based pricing is a better way to maintain good relations with the tax officials. Other variables like tax audit, volume of internal transactions, sales volume, and local equity ratio have shown only insignificant influence. Additionally, we have replaced two tax variables(corporate taxes and tariffs) with the data showing top marginal tax rate and mean tariff rates of each country, and have performed another regression to find if we could get different results compared with the former one. As a consequence, we have found something different on the part of mean tariffs, that shows only an insignificant influence on the dependent variable. We guess that each company in the sample pays tariffs with a specific rate applied only for one's own company, which could be located far from mean tariff rates. Therefore we have concluded we need a more detailed data that shows the tariffs of each company if we want to check the role of this variable. Considering that the present paper has heavily relied on questionnaires, an effort to build a reliable data base is needed for enhancing the research reliability.

기업환경의 국제화 및 세계화에 따라 국내에 진출하는 다국적기업의 수는 증가할 것으로 보이는데, 그들을 효율적으로 관리할 수 있는 적절한 수단은 별로 연구되고 있지 않은 것 같다. 다국적기업의 국제이전가격은 정교하게 설정되어 조세부담을 회피할 수 있기 때문에, 이를 관리하기 위해서는 다국적기업의 행태를 이해할 필요가 있다. 본 연구는 우리나라에 진출한 외국인 기업의 특성 및 환경적 요인이 국제이전가격의 설정방식에 미치는 영향을 확인하고자 하는데 그 목표를 두고 있다. 2004년 현재 우리나라에 미화 100만불 이상의 직접투자를 수행하고 있는 외국인 투자기업 861개 기업을 대상으로 설문조사를 시행한 결과 121개 기업이 응답하여 이를 본 연구의 분석자료로 사용하였다. 종속변수로는 국제이전가격설정방법이 시장기준 혹은 원가기준에 의거하였는지의 여부를 묻는 2원적변수를 채택하였다. 시장기준방법의 경우 객관성이 높아 세무당국이 선호하는 방법임에 비해 원가기준은 경영자의 주관적인 판단이 개입될 소지가 많아 객관성이 떨어진다는 점에서 구분되기 때문이다. 독립변수로는 법인세, 관세, 세무당국과의 관계, 세무조사가능성, 현지투자자의 지분율, 내부거래비중, 매출액 및 제품수명주기가 채택되었고, 통제변수로는 중소기업여부 및 투자자의 국적이 더미변수의 형태로 포함되었다. 분석 결과를 살펴보면 세무변수로는 법인세와 관세가 유의하게 나타났는데, 그 중요도가 높을수록 경영자에게 재량권이 있는 원가기준이전가격방식을 선호하는 것으로 나타났다. 또 세무당국과의 관계를 중요하게 평가할수록 시장기준이전가격방식을 선호하는 것으로 나타났는데, 현지 정부는 객관성이 높은 시장기준을 가장 선호하기 때문에 기업의 입장에서 이 점을 고려한 것이라 생각할 수 있다. 제품 수명주기의 성숙도가 높을수록 원가기준을 선호하는 것으로 나타났는데, 이는 제품의 성숙도가 높을수록 경쟁 때문에 현지자회사가 시장을 확보하는데 어려움을 느끼게 되므로 이를 지원하는 수단으로 원가기준을 선호하는 것으로 보인다.