Oggi la trasparenza rappresenta una questione chiave nelle agende degli attori della politica fiscale al livello internazionale e nazionale. Miglioramento del­l’accesso e dello scambio d’informazioni rilevanti ai fini fiscali e lo smantellamento delle esistenti normative sui segreti bancari e fiscali, insieme all’identifi­cazione delle giurisdizioni che promuovono le misure fiscali dannose, nel loro insieme attualmente sono percepiti come gli strumenti più efficaci per contrastare la concorrenza fiscale dannosa(o aggressiva). La Action 13 del Piano d’a­zione BEPS suggerisce di riformare la struttura della documentazione relativa ai prezzi di trasferimento e di introdurre un nuovo obbligo di segnalazione mo­dellato sul c.d. country-by country reporting. Anche se tale nuovo obbligo di segnalazione si propone di fornire uno strumento informativo per l’identifi­ca­zione anticipata dei rischi di transfer pricing all’interno del gruppo, il suo inaspettato ambito applicativo potrebbe diventare il miglioramento per un’accet­tazione globale dell’idea di una formula di riparto per l’allocazione dei profitti delle imprese multinazionali. Questo articolo si propone di fornire una revisione critica del modello proposto e di valutare il suo potenziale nel rinnovare il dibattito sulla formula di riparto.

1. Introduction Transparency represents today a key issue on the agendas of international and domestic tax policy makers. Improving the access and the exchange of relevant tax information and removing existing bank and tax secrecy regimes is currently seen as the most effective tool, together with the identification of harmful tax regimes and practices [1], to counter both tax evasion and harmful or aggressive tax competition. Since states have an ultimate right to structure their tax systems on the basis of tax sovereignty, international organizationshave only a limited power to influence coordination or even harmonization of substantive tax provisions. Moreover, there is no global consensus on what constitutes the admissible level of tax competition between jurisdictions. It is therefore not surprising that the international focus is shifting more and more on the issue of tax transparency [2], which appears – at least at first sight – to be less controversial. When evaluating whether a jurisdiction complies with international tax standards, transparency of tax systems has indeed become the most important criterion. In order to tackle the issue of the lack of available information concerning internationally mobile individuals and corporations, the OECD has launched initiatives such as the OECD Peer Reviews [3] of the jurisdictions and the OECD global standard for automatic exchange of information (the global standard) [4]. The global standard provides a model for a global  automatic exchange of information concerning  the financial accounts held by individuals in the countries other than those where they are resident for tax purposes. More­over, transparency is now one of the key pillars, together with substance and coherence, of the comprehensive Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (hereinafter referred to as BEPS) Project, which primarily targets international tax avoidance strategies by multinational companies [5]. The OECD published in 2013 the BEPS Report [6], which was followed by the BEPS Action Plan [7] defining concrete actions and deadlines for their implementation. Among fifteen actions identified in the BEPS Action Plan, the following three deal with the international corporate tax transparency: Action 11 “Establish Methodologies to Collect and Analyse Data on BEPS and the Actions to Address It”; Action 12 “Require Taxpayers to Disclose Their Aggressive Tax Planning Arrangements”; and Action 13 “Re-examine Transfer Pricing Documentation”. Out of these three action points, Action 13 has fuelled the most heated discussions among scholars, policy makers and representatives of the business community. The OECD’s starting point is the acknowledgment that the existing transfer pricing (substantive) rules, based on the arm’s length principle, give rise to manipulation, [continua..]