RusEnergy

15.02.2005 12:14 MSK MosNews - Russia's tax authorities denied a report on Monday that it had demanded back-taxes from oil firms because of their use of transfer pricing. Russian news agency Interfax had earlier quoted a source in the Federal Tax Service (FTS) as saying tax officials had sent claims for the 2001 tax year to a number of integrated oil companies. The purported demands were based on a law that permits an extra tax bill if a firm's internal prices deviate by more than 20 percent from market prices. "Information that claims have been sent to big oil companies on the basis of an audit for 2001 do not correspond to reality," FTS spokeswoman Yelena Tolgskaya told Reuters. Companies often use transfer pricing when moving oil from one part of the firm to another to present a more accurate picture of the profit and loss in each unit. Russia's tax authorities have rattled oil sector investors in the last year as they drove oil major Yukos into bankruptcy and asset sales with $27.5 billion in back-tax demands. Interfax's source did not name the companies in question or say how much they might have to pay, but said one subsidiary of an oil firm, accused of lowering internal prices by 8 billion rubles ($285 million), could be billed 2 billion rubles. The source also said the new claims could be related to a tax investigation into transfer pricing at Russian electricity monopoly Unified Energy Systems, and said claims for later years could follow. Russian oil firms LUKOIL, TNK-BP and Sibneft told Reuters they had no comment on the Interfax report.