24.5 Practical Areas of the Application of Transfer Pricing Rules 24-15 There is no obligation for the company to evaluate more than one method to jus tify its pricing methodology. The starting point in the tax investigation is not the method that the tax auditors believe is most appropriate, but the one that is chosen by the prudent business manager 24.5 PRACTICAL AREAS OF THE APPLICATION OF TRANSFER PRICING RULES (a) Distribution Companies German tax auditors focus their efforts on distribution companies with little or no profits. The importance of distribution companies is also evident if one consid- ers that almost all court decisions involving international transactions and the arms length principle deal with distribution companies. The auditors usually 1 different challenges to such companies 1. They question whether a third-party distributor would be willing to incur los 2. They challenge the allocation of certain costs between the supplier and the distributor(mostly advertising and warranty costs) 3. They analyze which party has borne the costs for business strategies All three of the above issues are interrelated to a certain extent. In many ca the issue comes down to whether the gross margin is high enough to cover the costs for the functions performed (advertising, warranty costs, market penetration costs etc. )as well as for the risk being borne by the distributor(currency risk, inventory risk, price risk, and so forth) (i Start-Up Losses and Continuing Losses. Distribution companies with losses are one of the main targets of the german tax administration. The adminis- trative principles provide little guidance, but the tax auditors see themselves backed with a Federal Tax Court decision of 1993 that states that a distribution company should in general not incur losses for more than three years. The court determined that a prudent business manager would agree to distribute a product only if the manager expected to receive a reasonable profit over the lifetime of the product. This expectation has to be substantiated with marketing plans, an adver tising strategy, and profit forecasts 48Federal Tax Court . 17, 1993, BStBl. I 1993, P. 457: Lower Tax Court of Hessen, October 17, 1988, FG1989,p.200;L Court of Saarland, October 25, 1995, EFG 1996, p. 48; Lower Tax Court of Dus- eNdorf, December 8 seRE1999,1999p.792 See Federal Tax Court, February 17, 1993, BStB1. I 1993, p. 457