A Study on Advance Customs Valuation Arrangement between Multinational Enterprises and Korea Customs Service

과세가격 사전약정제도의 개선방안에 관한 연구

Multinational Enterprises set the prices for transactions between affiliates based principally on their global interest. But the customs authority in Korea wants to set the arm's length price as high as possible to get higher dutiable value for customs purpose, while the internal tax authority in Korea prefers lower arm's length price to get higher value for corporation tax purpose by cutting costs. Problem caused by the inconsistent valuation methods on the same imported goods of the two tax authorities is the single most important tax issue facing multinational enterprises. In the meantime, the customs authority in Korea has thought that it is a universal trend worldwide for the Customs and Internal tax authorities to adopt different methods of valuation on transfer prices between related parties, so KCS couldn't accept APA prices. But the internal tax authority in Korea has taken the initiative in APA program so NTS provided taxpayer with safe-harbor. Recently, KCS created the Advance Customs Valuation Arrangement(ACVA) provisions in the 2008 revision bill of the Customs Act through benchmarking APAs program. Can APAs work for customs? Neither WCO or OECD presents any recommendation on the integration of the valuation methods, but calls for close cooperation between two authorities, which still leaves taxpayers very unstable. We will start to seek ways to integrate the customs valuation and transfer pricing in this study.