Amendments to the Taxes and Duties Act that require taxpayers to prepare and file a specified form of transfer pricing (TP) documentation with the State Revenue Service (SRS) took effect back in 2018, yet we had not seen any active enforcement steps from the SRS until the end of this summer, when several Latvian companies received an informational report on the submission of TP documentation via the SRS’s e-filing system (“EDS”). These reports imply that the SRS is checking the companies’ obligation to file TP documentation for 2020 and urging them to do so by the deadline stated in the report or to explain why they should not file TP documentation. This article reminds you of the TP documentation preparation and filing requirements and of the SRS’s activities in enforcing them, and we also suggest steps your company might take after receiving such a report.

Our experience suggests that the State Revenue Service (SRS) has recently focused on checking how Latvian corporate taxpayers fulfil their obligation under transfer pricing (TP) legislation,  i.e. (1) whether they have prepared TP documentation in the prescribed form by the statutory deadline and (2) whether their documentation gives all the required information to verify that their controlled transactions are arm’s length.

With the financial year nearing its end, section 15.2 of the Taxes and Duties Act requires many companies to prepare, or to prepare and file with the State Revenue Service (SRS), their transfer pricing (TP) documentation. Since determining related-party status often confuses taxpayers and authorities, this article reminds you who is considered a related party for TP purposes and what transactions require the taxpayer to prepare TP documentation.