Armenia Intercompany Documentation Requirements: What Belongs in the File When Your Foreign Parent Pays the Armenian Team

An Armenian subsidiary gets 30 working days from the State Revenue Committee’s written notice to produce its transfer pricing local file. That is too short a period to build a file from nothing, so the file that survives a review is the one assembled while the invoices are still being raised. What belongs in it depends on what the foreign parent is paying for.

Is this your situation?

Chapter 73 of the Tax Code (HO-165-N, overhauled by HO-86-N of 23 March 2022) reaches a foreign parent and its Armenian subsidiary through ownership and through economic dependence. Most technology groups are caught by both.

Ownership is the plain test: a direct or indirect holding of 20% or more makes the parties related under Article 362(2)(1). The wording is “20 per cent and more”, so a party sitting exactly on 20% is inside the rule, not outside it. The alternative control tests in Article 362(3) catch structures where the shareholding is small or sits inside a holding vehicle. One of those is also inclusive — holding 20% or more of the voting securities. The rest are worded as a strict excess, so a party sitting exactly on the stated percentage falls outside those:

• loans and guarantees between the parties exceeding 51% of the other party’s total assets
• more than 80% of one party’s revenue coming from the other
• more than 80% of one party’s expenses going to the other
• control over the formation of the other’s board or executive body
• gratuitous use of property worth more than 51% of the user’s assets for longer than a year, which does not extend to ordinary paid leasing

A captive development centre that bills a single foreign parent for all of its work meets the revenue test on its own, whatever the shareholding register says.

Once the parties are related, a transaction between an Armenian resident and a non-resident is controlled under Article 363. Some transactions are controlled without relatedness at all: a counterparty in a jurisdiction taxing profit at 10% or less falls under Article 361(5), and a domestic Armenian-to-Armenian transaction is controlled where one party is a royalty payer under Article 198(2) or enjoys profit-tax or royalty relief. The full treatment of the regime sits in our Armenia transfer pricing guide.

The aggregate value at which the notification duty attaches is AMD 200,000,000 under Article 363(6) (about USD 550,000 at the CBA rate of 363.44 on 18 September 2026), subject to the exception in Article 363(4), and the filing date is 20 April under Article 375. Draft 10013 would raise the figure to AMD 600,000,000 (about USD 1,650,000 at the same rate) and move the date to 30 July. Its project page carries an adopted label, but that label records the state of the draft, not the state of the law: no promulgated enacting law can be located on ARLIS, in the Tax Code’s amendment history, or in the National Assembly’s adopted-bill tracker, and official publication is what brings a law into force. Nor is the consolidated Code out of date — ARLIS marks the current version effective from 1 September 2026, and Article 375’s amendment annotation still cites Law HO-86-N of 23 March 2022. The 2025 amendment that does appear under Article 363 changed a cross-reference in paragraph 5, not the threshold in paragraph 6. File on AMD 200,000,000 and 20 April.

What the file has to prove

A review turns on whether the charge was real and whether its price was arm’s length. Contracts, invoices and settlement records answer the first. The second needs a method from Article 368 and Government Decision 556-N: comparable uncontrolled price, resale price, cost plus, transactional net margin, or profit split. Article 368(3) gives the comparable uncontrolled price method priority where it and another method are equally reliable, which in a captive services arrangement usually points to cost plus or transactional net margin, because independent comparables for bespoke development work are scarce.

The Tax Code sets out no named “benefit test” for management charges. What an inspector looks for is evidence that the Armenian entity received something identifiable for the fee. A service agreement promises the service. Deliverables and time records show it arrived.

The documentation checklist, by charge type

Development services and management charges

• the service or development agreement, with scope, pricing basis and mark-up stated on its face
• corporate authority for the arrangement where the group’s own rules require board or shareholder approval
• statements of work, sprint or release records, and time records tied to named personnel
• deliverables the Armenian entity can point to: commits, builds, releases, tickets closed, reports issued
• invoices that reconcile to the pricing basis in the agreement, and the bank records settling them
• the benchmarking study supporting the mark-up, with the search criteria and the rejected comparables retained alongside the final range

IP licensing and royalties

• chain of title to the licensed software or mark, traced back to the developer or assignor
• the licence terms: territory, duration, field of use, and the base the royalty is calculated on
• evidence that the Armenian entity used what it licensed
• the royalty computation for each period, reconciled to the accounts it draws on
• withholding calculations, and where a treaty rate is claimed, the counterparty’s tax residence certificate and beneficial ownership support
• an analysis of which entity developed, enhanced, maintained, protected and exploited the intellectual property, since that allocation drives where the return should sit

Intercompany loans

Armenian law is unforgiving about form here. Under Civil Code Article 877(1) a loan agreement is concluded when the money is delivered, Article 878(1) requires written form, and Article 878(3) makes an agreement that fails the written-form requirement void. A void loan is not a loan the SRC will price.

• the written loan agreement, carrying principal, interest rate, term, repayment schedule and currency
• evidence the funds moved: bank statements on both sides matching the agreement
• interest accruals and payments, with the foreign exchange treatment shown
• withholding calculations on interest, and treaty documentation where a reduced rate is applied
• the business purpose file: what the money was for and what the Armenian entity did with it
• comparable loan evidence supporting the rate, by reference to terms a lender would have offered on the same security and tenor

What sits in the file whatever the charge

• the local file, which attaches under Article 376(1.1)(1) to taxpayers that have notified controlled transactions
• a copy of the notification as filed, with the transaction values it reported
• group structure: who owns what, and who sits on which board
• the financial statements the pricing draws on

The master file is a separate obligation, and Article 376(1.1)(2) places it on the group’s parent. An Armenian subsidiary does not acquire it automatically by crossing the notification threshold, though a group that has never prepared one will find its Armenian entity asking for it under time pressure. Sector-specific considerations for software, manufacturing and distribution groups are covered in our industry transfer pricing note.

When the SRC can ask, and how fast you must respond

The local file is produced on request, and the 30 working days in Article 376(2) run from receipt of the SRC’s written notice. Where the file is in English or Russian, Article 376(3) permits it, and an Armenian translation becomes due within 10 working days of a further request. Those clocks can overlap, which is the practical reason to keep an Armenian version of the agreements and the method section on hand.

Article 374(3) waives late-payment penalties on amounts a taxpayer adjusts itself under Article 374(1). The waiver is tied to that provision, so it does not obviously extend to an adjustment made under Article 374(2), where the SRC proposes the correction and the taxpayer files within one month. Assume the relief covers the self-initiated route only. Documentation and notification sanctions are governed separately, so a clean self-correction on price does not cure a notification that was never filed. The penalty architecture is set out in our note on transfer pricing penalties and adjustments.

Country-by-country reporting sits above most groups with a single Armenian development subsidiary. Article 376(1.1)(3) attaches it where the parent’s gross income for the previous tax year exceeds EUR 750,000,000, and submission falls due within 12 months of the year end.

Groups still forming the Armenian entity can set the paperwork up correctly at the outset: see company registration in Armenia and our Armenian tax services.

Frequently asked questions

Last updated: 22 September 2026