Samil PricewaterhouseCoopers has, according to peers, long been a key player in the Korean market. The firm covers a wide range of tax areas but has recently placed a specific emphasis on transfer pricing as an area for continued development. The firm ...
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Samil PricewaterhouseCoopers has, according to peers, long been a key player in the Korean market. The firm covers a wide range of tax areas but has recently placed a specific emphasis on transfer pricing as an area for continued development. The firm now boasts 50 specialists in total working across the firm's three transfer pricing groups; general transfer pricing, financial services transfer pricing and transfer pricing for Japanese multinationals. Henry An is recognised as one of the country's leading transfer pricing specialists.
The firm maintains a strong leadership presence in the Korean tax community, with partners occupying leadership positions in the American Chamber of Commerce (Henry An), EU Chamber of Commerce (Joong-Hyun Lee), and the International Fiscal Association (David Jin-Young Lee).
The firm already had a track record for hiring former government officials, and it seems this trend has continued over the past 12 months. Man-Young Kim was brought in as a director from the NTS.
David Jin-Young Lee and Shin-Jong Kang worked together on a deal that had a large impact on the country's variable life insurance industry. During a tax audit, the NTS issued a pre-assessment worth $100 million on valuation gains on securities of a leading foreign-invested insurance company. The firm overturned the ruling and that decision had a ripple effect across the industry worth around $2 billion.
Dong-Keon Lee represented a client, a foreign invested company, that was exempt from customs duties and VAT on imported capital goods with respect to investments to manufacture goods in a foreign investment zone. Following the decision to cease trading in Korea, the NTS tried to claw back these tax exemptions. However, Lee successfully prevented the authorities from reclaiming any of them. This was the first successful attempt to prevent claw back.
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