Transfer Pricing Consultant in Ahmedabad: CA Murli Chandak’s Guide for Gujarat’s Pharma, EV Supply Chain and Export Businesses

In short: Ahmedabad’s transfer pricing exposure rarely comes from being an export hub in the abstract — it comes from how many local businesses now sit inside a group structure they didn’t have five years ago: a pharma company running contract manufacturing or trials for an overseas affiliate, a Sanand-belt auto or EV-component supplier billing a foreign parent, a denim, chemical or engineering exporter routing sales through a related buying office, or a GCC quietly approaching the revised Safe Harbour thresholds. Once an Indian entity transacts with an associated enterprise — goods, services, royalties, loans, guarantees, cost allocations — that transaction must be priced at arm’s length under Sections 161–173 of the Income-tax Act, 2025 (Sections 92–92F of the 1961 Act still govern FY 2025-26), supported by benchmarking and an accountant’s report filed a month ahead of the 30 November return deadline. This guide covers what triggers the rules, how the arm’s length price and benchmark are actually built, the 2026 compliance and Safe Harbour changes, what a Transfer Pricing Officer examines, why Ahmedabad’s business base is particularly exposed, and how I support businesses here through all of it.

Contents

1. 1. Why Transfer Pricing Matters for Ahmedabad Businesses
2. 2. Associated Enterprises and International Transactions, in Brief
3. 3. Transactions That Most Often Trigger a Review
4. 4. How the Arm’s Length Price Is Determined
5. 5. Benchmarking: Where Most Disputes Actually Start
6. 6. Documentation and the 2026 Compliance Reset: Form 3CEB to Form No. 48
7. 7. Safe Harbour Under the New Rules
8. 8. What Happens During a Transfer Pricing Assessment
9. 9. Penalties for Non-Compliance
10. 10. Why Ahmedabad’s Business Base Is Particularly Exposed
11. 11. Transfer Pricing Services From CA Murli Chandak
12. 12. Choosing the Right Transfer Pricing Consultant in Ahmedabad
13. 13. Frequently Asked Questions
14. Discuss Your Transfer Pricing Position

1. Why Transfer Pricing Matters for Ahmedabad Businesses

Transfer pricing determines the price at which two related, or “associated,” enterprises transact with one another. Indian law requires that price to reflect what independent, unrelated parties would have agreed to under comparable conditions — the arm’s length price. It is not a large-multinational concern reserved for Mumbai or Bengaluru head offices. An Ahmedabad-based subsidiary of a foreign group, a manufacturer exporting to a related buying office, a startup with an overseas holding company, or a software or ITeS unit billing a group entity abroad can all fall squarely within the framework, regardless of size.

The consequence of getting this wrong is not a paperwork inconvenience. If a Transfer Pricing Officer determines that a related-party price was not at arm’s length, the difference can be added back to taxable income, with interest, and — separately — penalties can attach to documentation and reporting failures whether or not any adjustment is ultimately made. For a business with recurring intercompany transactions, that risk compounds every year the position goes unreviewed.

2. Associated Enterprises and International Transactions, in Brief

Two conditions generally need to be satisfied together before transfer pricing applies: the parties must qualify as associated enterprises — broadly, entities connected through ownership, voting power, management control, or one of several deeming provisions (26 per cent voting power, the power to appoint a majority of directors, dependence on shared patents or technical know-how, common control by an individual or family group, among others) — and the transaction itself must be an international transaction (involving at least one non-resident party) or a specified domestic transaction between related domestic entities, generally relevant above an aggregate value of ₹20 crore for the year.

I go into the full mechanics of both tests, including the complete deeming-provision list and how the two tax years’ section numbers map onto each other, in What Is Transfer Pricing? — worth reading first if you are new to the subject. This page focuses on what an Ahmedabad business specifically needs to do about it.

3. Transactions That Most Often Trigger a Review

Transfer pricing is not limited to a straightforward sale or purchase of goods. In practice, I most often see the following categories require analysis:

• Import and export of goods. Raw materials, components or finished products moving between an Ahmedabad manufacturer and an overseas group company — common across the city’s engineering, chemical, pharma and textile exporters.
• Management, technical and IT-enabled services. Software development, back-office support, technical assistance, marketing or administrative services billed to or received from a foreign affiliate.
• Royalties and intangibles. Payments for a brand, technology, know-how or software licence — frequently the hardest category to benchmark, since a market rate for a specific piece of intellectual property is rarely observable.
• Inter-company loans and guarantees. Financing from a parent to a subsidiary, or a guarantee given by one group entity on another’s bank facility — the interest rate, tenor, security and credit profile all need to be tested against arm’s length terms.
• Cost allocations and reimbursements. Shared technology, personnel or administrative costs apportioned across group entities — the allocation basis and whether a mark-up should apply both need documentation, and a payment labelled “reimbursement” is not automatically outside scope.

The correct treatment depends on the transaction’s actual substance and contractual terms, not the label used in the books of account.

4. How the Arm’s Length Price Is Determined

Every transfer pricing analysis starts with a Functional, Asset and Risk (FAR) analysis: what activities each entity actually performs, what tangible and intangible assets it uses, and which entity carries market, credit, inventory, foreign-exchange and other commercial risks. A routine service provider bearing limited risk should expect a stable, modest return; an entrepreneurial entity carrying full market risk should expect a materially different one.

Once the FAR profile is established, the Most Appropriate Method is selected from six prescribed options — Comparable Uncontrolled Price, Resale Price, Cost Plus, Profit Split, Transactional Net Margin Method (TNMM), and a residual “Other Method.” TNMM is the most commonly applied in Indian practice, largely because reliable net-margin data on comparable independent companies is easier to obtain than transaction-level price or gross-margin data. The full mechanics of each method, and the eight-step process I follow to move from FAR analysis to a defensible arm’s length conclusion, are set out in What Is Transfer Pricing?

5. Benchmarking: Where Most Disputes Actually Start

Benchmarking is the process of testing a related-party transaction against what independent parties actually did — and it is, in my experience, where the majority of transfer pricing disputes originate. A Transfer Pricing Officer reviewing a benchmarking study will typically question the comparable companies selected (and rejected), the filters applied, whether the tested party was chosen correctly, the profit-level indicator used, whether adjustments for working capital or risk differences were needed, and how extraordinary items or segmental results were handled.

A defensible benchmark does more than land on a favourable margin. It builds a transparent, logical trail — nature of the transaction, functions and risks, comparable search strategy, financial analysis, and final arm’s length conclusion — that someone who was not involved in the original work can follow and test. That is the standard every benchmarking study in this practice is built to.

6. Documentation and the 2026 Compliance Reset: Form 3CEB to Form No. 48

Transfer pricing compliance in India is going through a genuine structural change, and Ahmedabad businesses with transactions spanning both tax years need to track the transition carefully.

For FY 2025-26 (Assessment Year 2026-27) — the year most businesses are currently closing — the governing law remains the Income-tax Act, 1961, and the accountant’s report is Form 3CEB under Section 92E and Rule 10E, due 31 October 2026, one month ahead of the 30 November 2026 income tax return deadline for taxpayers required to file it.

From Tax Year 2026-27 onward, the report becomes Form No. 48 under Section 172 of the Income-tax Act, 2025, read with Rule 85 of the Income-tax Rules, 2026 — a structured, transaction-by-transaction, ID-linked format that discloses benchmarking detail, comparability adjustments and Advance Pricing Agreement coverage within the form itself, rather than only in the underlying study. Form No. 48 must be filed at least one month before the due date for furnishing the return of income under Section 263(1) for the relevant tax year.

Aspect	FY 2025-26 (AY 2026-27)	Tax Year 2026-27 onward
Governing law	Income-tax Act, 1961 (Sections 92–92F)	Income-tax Act, 2025 (Sections 161–173)
Accountant’s report	Form 3CEB, Rule 10E	Form No. 48, Section 172, Rule 85
Report due date	31 October 2026	One month before the Section 263(1) return due date
Return due date (TP taxpayers)	30 November 2026	30 November of the relevant tax year (unless extended)

Alongside the accountant’s report, businesses must maintain contemporaneous transfer pricing documentation covering the group’s ownership structure, the FAR analysis, the economic and comparable analysis, the method-selection rationale and supporting calculations — prepared alongside the transactions themselves, not reconstructed after a notice arrives. As a practical relief, a detailed local file is not required where the aggregate value of international transactions for the year does not exceed ₹1 crore, though the underlying pricing must still be commercially reasonable.

7. Safe Harbour Under the New Rules

Safe Harbour lets an eligible taxpayer accept a prescribed margin or price for specified categories of transactions instead of running a fresh annual benchmarking exercise, in exchange for greater certainty. The framework has been substantially widened under the Income-tax Rules, 2026 (finalised 20 March 2026, effective 1 April 2026):

• The earlier IT, ITeS, KPO and contract-R&D categories are now consolidated into a single “Information Technology Services” category at a uniform 15.5% margin on operating expenses — well below the earlier 17–24% range.
• The eligibility threshold has been raised from ₹300 crore to ₹2,000 crore of aggregate eligible transaction revenue, tested only in the first of a five-consecutive-year block.
• The election is made in a single, consolidated Form No. 49, replacing the earlier Forms 3CEFA, 3CEFB and 3CEFC.
• New categories now also cover data-centre services and bonded warehousing for electronic components, reflecting the push toward India as a cloud-infrastructure and electronics-manufacturing hub.

For Ahmedabad’s GCCs and larger IT-enabled service providers, the widened threshold brings genuinely mid-sized operations into scope for the first time. That said, Safe Harbour is a certainty trade, not an automatic saving: accepting a prescribed margin also means forgoing Mutual Agreement Procedure relief for that transaction, so the decision should follow a comparison against what a conventional benchmark would actually support — not a default election made for convenience. Documentation obligations continue to apply to every eligible transaction even where Safe Harbour is claimed.

8. What Happens During a Transfer Pricing Assessment

Where the Assessing Officer refers a case to the Transfer Pricing Officer, the TPO can examine agreements and records, request additional information, review the transfer pricing method selected, challenge the comparables used, apply comparability adjustments, and ultimately propose an adjustment to taxable income.

A transfer pricing notice should never be treated as a routine information request. The response should work through the transaction under examination, the specific questions raised, the existing documentation and FAR analysis, the benchmarking methodology, and the supporting financial and commercial evidence — presenting a clear, internally consistent, evidence-based position rather than simply defending the margin originally reported.

9. Penalties for Non-Compliance

Consequences depend on the specific default and the law governing the relevant tax year. Under the framework currently applicable to FY 2025-26 (the Income-tax Act, 1961):

Default	Indicative penalty
Failure to maintain or furnish prescribed documentation — Section 271AA	2% of the transaction value, where applicable
Failure to furnish the accountant’s report (Form 3CEB) — Section 271BA	₹1,00,000
Failure to furnish information called for by the TPO — Section 271G	2% of the transaction value, per failure
Failure to furnish the Master File — Section 271AA(2)	₹5,00,000

Under the Income-tax Act, 2025 (applicable from Tax Year 2026-27), these consequences sit within the consolidated Chapter XXI: documentation failure broadly mirrors the earlier 2% charge under Section 442, CbCR penalties move to Section 459, and the general under-reporting/misreporting penalty — which can also attach to a transfer pricing adjustment — sits at Section 439. Beyond monetary penalties, non-compliance can trigger the underlying tax adjustment itself, interest, secondary-adjustment consequences, and extended assessment or appellate proceedings. I’d always recommend confirming the precise provision and figure against the finally notified law for the specific tax year before relying on it for a filing.

10. Why Ahmedabad’s Business Base Is Particularly Exposed

Ahmedabad’s economy gives it a distinctive transfer pricing profile, different from a services-led city like Bengaluru or a financial-hub city like Mumbai.

• Pharma and life sciences. With Zydus Lifesciences and Torrent Pharmaceuticals headquartered in the city, and a wider base of pharma and API manufacturers around it, contract manufacturing, R&D cost-sharing, and royalty arrangements with overseas group entities are a recurring feature of the sector here.
• The Sanand automotive and EV supply chain. Tata Motors’ two Sanand passenger-vehicle plants and the Tata group’s Agratas battery-cell gigafactory under construction on the same belt are drawing in a growing layer of component and vendor suppliers — several with cross-border technology-licensing, tooling-import or vendor-financing arrangements with a foreign principal or affiliate.
• Denim, textile and chemical exports. Ahmedabad is among India’s largest denim manufacturing centres, and the wider chemical and engineering export base routinely sells to, or sources from, related buying offices and group entities abroad.
• GCCs and IT/ITeS. A growing base of global capability centres and software service providers bill an overseas parent for development, support or back-office services — precisely the category the revised Safe Harbour Information Technology Services rules now target.
• Family-owned groups with an international footprint. Many of Ahmedabad’s closely-held business houses now run entities in more than one country. The commercial closeness of a family relationship does not remove the arm’s length requirement between the entities themselves.

Businesses in each of these categories tend to assume the transaction is “just an internal group matter” until a TPO examination says otherwise. An early applicability review, before the transaction pattern is set for the year, is consistently cheaper than a retrospective fix.

11. Transfer Pricing Services From CA Murli Chandak

Transfer pricing work in this practice runs from an initial applicability check through to assessment support, structured around the business’s actual transactions rather than a generic template:

• Applicability review. Confirming whether your associated-enterprise relationships and transactions fall within the international-transaction or specified-domestic-transaction framework, before it becomes a year-end compliance surprise.
• FAR analysis and method selection. Establishing the functional and risk profile of each entity and choosing the transfer pricing method that gives the most reliable arm’s length result for the specific transaction.
• Benchmarking studies. Comparable company searches, functional comparability screening, profit-level indicator analysis and comparability adjustments, built to withstand scrutiny rather than simply to produce a number.
• Documentation and the accountant’s report. Transfer pricing documentation, and the applicable accountant’s report — Form 3CEB for FY 2025-26, Form No. 48 as Tax Year 2026-27 comes into force — coordinated with your income-tax return.
• Safe Harbour advisory. Checking eligibility under the revised 2026 rules and comparing the Safe Harbour outcome against a conventional benchmark before you elect.
• TPO assessment support. Reviewing notices, preparing responses, and defending the benchmarking methodology and comparables where a transaction is selected for examination.
• Valuation of financial transactions and intangibles. Where a transfer pricing question turns on the value of a loan, guarantee, equity instrument or intangible asset, that work draws directly on this practice’s valuation background, including work for funds and companies across seven countries.

This sits alongside the practice’s broader taxation services and advisory services, so transfer pricing planning doesn’t happen in isolation from the rest of a group’s tax and reporting position.

12. Choosing the Right Transfer Pricing Consultant in Ahmedabad

A transfer pricing engagement is only as strong as the reasoning and evidence behind it. When evaluating a consultant, it’s worth checking for:

• Relevant transaction experience — import/export, IT/ITeS services, royalties, financing and guarantees, cost allocations — rather than a single-industry background applied to every client.
• Genuine benchmarking capability — the ability to identify, defend and, where needed, reject comparables, rather than simply running a database search and presenting the first result.
• Broader international tax fluency — how transfer pricing interacts with double taxation agreements, withholding tax, FEMA reporting and permanent establishment exposure, since these rarely arrive as isolated questions.
• Valuation capability where the transaction involves shares, financial instruments, guarantees or intangible assets — the arm’s length outcome there often turns on the underlying value, not just an operating margin.
• Assessment and TPO representation experience — not just report preparation, since the report’s real test comes if and when it is examined.
• Fluency in the 2025-26 transition — knowing which Act, form and section number applies to which tax year, and not carrying an old figure or form reference forward into a current filing by mistake.

I’m a Fellow Chartered Accountant with over eight years in practice and an IBBI-Registered Valuer (Securities or Financial Assets), and I’ve completed 300+ valuations across seven countries including the United States — work that regularly sits alongside transfer pricing questions involving financing, guarantees and intangible assets. Based in Ahmedabad, I work directly with clients rather than through a layered team, which matters when a benchmarking position needs to be explained and defended quickly.

13. Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. Does transfer pricing apply to a small or mid-sized Ahmedabad company, or only large multinationals?

A: It applies based on whether your transactions and counterparties meet the associated-enterprise and international-transaction (or specified-domestic-transaction) tests — turnover alone does not exempt a business. A modestly sized exporter billing a related overseas buying office can be squarely within scope.

Q2. We already have a Form 3CEB filed every year — do we still need a fresh benchmarking review?

A: Generally yes, at least periodically. Margins, comparables and business circumstances can shift year to year, and a benchmark that held up two years ago is not automatically still defensible today, particularly heading into the Form No. 48 transition.

Q3. What is the practical difference between Form 3CEB and Form No. 48?

A: Form 3CEB, under the 1961 Act, still applies for FY 2025-26. Form No. 48, under Section 172 of the Income-tax Act, 2025 and Rule 85 of the Income-tax Rules, 2026, applies from Tax Year 2026-27 and requires structured, transaction-by-transaction disclosure — including benchmarking and comparability detail — within the form itself, rather than only in the supporting study.

Q4. Is Safe Harbour a good option for our IT/ITeS entity?

A: It can be, particularly now that the eligible revenue threshold has risen to ₹2,000 crore and the margin has fallen to a uniform 15.5%. But it should follow a comparison against what your actual benchmarking would support, since electing Safe Harbour also gives up Mutual Agreement Procedure protection for that transaction.

Q5. What happens if our related-party pricing is found not to be at arm’s length?

A: The Transfer Pricing Officer can propose an adjustment to your taxable income for the difference, potentially with interest, and separate penalties can apply to documentation or reporting failures regardless of whether an adjustment is ultimately made. You retain statutory rights to respond, object and appeal throughout the process.

Q6. Do family-owned groups with entities abroad need to worry about this?

A: Yes. The commercial trust within a family-run group does not remove the arm’s length requirement between its separate legal entities once they qualify as associated enterprises. This is one of the most common gaps I find when reviewing a growing family business’s cross-border transactions for the first time.

Discuss Your Transfer Pricing Position

If your Ahmedabad business has cross-border group transactions, related-party dealings, or you’re simply unsure whether last year’s approach still holds up under the 2026 changes, tell me about your structure and I can map out what your specific transactions actually require.

CA Murli Chandak – FCA | IBBI-Registered Valuer (Securities or Financial Assets) | IBBI/RV/07/2021/14408
Website: murlichandak.com
Phone: +91 99985 39902
Email: murlichandak@murlichandak.com
LinkedIn: Connect with CA Murli Chandak

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This article is intended for general guidance only and does not constitute professional tax advice. Statutory positions are stated as at September 2026 and were verified against the Income-tax Act, 1961 (Sections 92–92F), the Income-tax Act, 2025 (Sections 161–173, 263, 439–472), and the finalised Income-tax Rules, 2026 (notified 20 March 2026), including the Safe Harbour Rules and Form No. 48/Form No. 49. Rules, rates, thresholds and prescribed procedures remain subject to change and, in places, to further notification. Please obtain advice specific to your circumstances before relying on any figure in this article for a filing.