The US Tax Court ruling in Amazon: A leading case on transfer pricing litigation related to intangible assets and digital economy

Abstract

This paper analyzes the recent US Tax Court ruling in the Amazon case, which constitutes an important leading case on transfer pricing, The Tax Court ruling addresses a good number of key issues relating to the valuation of intra-group transactions involving the transfer of intangible assets, as those that were carried out between the US parent company of the Amazon group and its Luxembourg subsidiary for the purposes of the development of the European e-commerce platform. Such transfer of intangibles was carried out under a «cost sharing agreement» (CSA) in the context of an international business restructuring operation.