JOINT INITIATIVE OF THE UNDP AND OECD

• Recently, the Tax Inspectors Without Borders (TIWB), a joint initiative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), launched its programme in Bhutan.
• India was chosen as the Partner Jurisdiction and has provided the Tax Expert for this programme.

Important points:

• This programme is expected to be of about 24 months’ duration.
• It aims to aid Bhutan in strengthening its tax administration by transferring technical know-how and skills to its tax auditors, and through sharing of best audit practices. The focus of the programme will be in the area of International Taxation and Transfer Pricing.
• Transfer price, also known as transfer cost, is the price at which related parties transact with each other, such as during the trade of supplies or labor between departments. Multinational companies can manipulate transfer prices in order to shift profits to low tax regions.
• This programme is another milestone in the continued cooperation between India and Bhutan and India’s continued and active support for South-South cooperation.

Tax Inspectors Without Borders:

• TIWB is a capacity-building programme.
• It is a joint OECD/UNDP initiative launched in July 2015 to strengthen developing countries’ auditing capacity and multinationals’ compliance worldwide.
• It deploys qualified experts in developing countries across Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean to help build tax capacity in the areas of audit, criminal tax investigations and the effective use of automatically exchanged information.
• TIWB assistance has led to increased domestic resource mobilisation in some of the least developed countries in the world.

SOURCE: THE HINDU,THE ECONOMC TIMES,MINT