The World Customs Organisation (WCO) held a Customs valuation and transfer pricing workshop for the East and Southern Africa (ESA) region in Harare, Zimbabwe last month. It was attended by 22 participants from 17 ESA region countries, and was funded by the China Customs Cooperation Fund.
According to the WCO, the linkage between Customs valuation and transfer pricing has been an emerging issue over recent years for Customs administrations in many parts of the world. It has been established that transfer pricing information prepared for tax purposes can be useful with respect to Customs verification of related party transactions for multi-national companies. The Workshop provided technical background on both topics and gave examples and exercises on the use of transfer pricing data by Customs. Representatives of three administrations, Sars, Uganda Revenue Authority and Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra), gave interesting presentations on their experiences regarding the themed topics.
The Workshop also included sessions on the WCO’s Revenue Package programme, designed to assist countries in the enhancement of fair and efficient revenue collection, with a special focus on the challenges of implementing the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Valuation Agreement in developing countries. Information was also provided on best practices in the provision of advance rulings for valuation and the WCO’s “Guidelines for strengthening cooperation and exchange of information between Customs and Tax authorities at the national level”.
