A Look at Expert Witness Reports in Australia’s SNF Litigation

Expert witness reports filed on behalf of the Australian Taxation Office in the recent case of SNF (Australia) Pty. Ltd. v. Comr. made a strong case for the Federal Court to reject SNF (Australia)’s comparable uncontrolled price method and to instead adopt the ATO’s proposed transactional net margin method. However, the court chose to uphold SNF (Australia)’s selection of the CUP method, with Justice Middleton declining to rely on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s transfer pricing guidelines in interpreting the nation’s domestic transfer pricing law under Division 13 of Australia’s Income Tax Assessment Act.

Anthony Seve, SNF (Australia)’s expert witness, said it was reasonable to use the transactions identified by his comparability analysis to support a CUP analysis for SNF (Australia)’s purchases of polyacrylamide products from related party SNF France. Enjoying this article? To continue reading you need to take out a FREE trial to the Transfer Pricing Library.




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