Study On The Legal Issues Of Marketing Intangible Assets Transfer Pricing

With the arrival of knowledge economy, marketing intangible asset, as a new type of intangible asset spawned by promotion and other marketing activities, is helpful for the sale of goods or services. As is known to us all, transfer pricing of intangible assets has been associated enterprises' customary tactics to evade tax. Now, transfer pricing of marketing intangible assets is going on to become one of the new tricks to evade tax, which also has attracted the attention of tax authorities in various countries. Based on our increasingly improved domestic investment environment, China is one of the most popular areas for multinational companies to establishing affiliated enterprises. A large number of investments do promote the development of China's domestic economy, but they also bring a lot of new problems of transfer pricing of marketing intangible assets in China. To solve these new problems, we have to resort to our country's legal system. However, the system of marketing intangible assets transfer pricing in our country is not completed. There are still many defects, including lack of specified provision of legal regime, lack of clear range of marketing intangible asset, lack of the guidance on the application of marketing intangible assets transfer pricing adjustment method; the tax collection procedure being irregular, the auditing mechanism being inadequate, the distribution of the burden of proof being unreasonable, the accountability punishment being weak. The United States is the first to establish the system of marketing intangible assets transfer pricing. What's more, the system in Japan, Australia and India has also been quite perfected. The experience in those countries can give us an example for establishing and perfecting our country's legal system of marketing intangible assets transfer pricing. Therefore, based on the experience of other countries and our national conditions, we can do the things as follows. On the substantive aspect, there is a need to introduce specific laws and regulations to transfer pricing of marketing intangible assets; to definite marketing intangible assets; to promote detailed guidance on the application of adjustment method of marketing intangible assets transfer pricing. The procedural aspect includes setting up a special tax inspection procedure, distributing the burden of proof reasonably, increasing the intensity of punishment among associated companies which has made use of marketing intangible assets transfer pricing to evade tax.