The Tokyo Taxation Bureau imposed about 700 million yen in penalties and back taxes last year on Asahi Breweries Ltd. for its failure to declare 1.69 billion yen in income transferred to an overseas finance subsidiary over five years through 1995, industry sources said Tuesday.But the Tokyo-based major beer brewer has filed a complaint with the National Tax Tribunal, calling it an "unfair taxation based on a vague levy standard" of calculating as income the guarantees offered for fund procurement by overseas finance subsidiaries, the sources said.Asahi has paid about 900 million yen, including the penalties and arrears for what the tax bureau identified as transferred income by calculating the difference between appropriate and actual amount of guarantee charges paid by Asahi's Dutch subsidiary, Asahi Beer International Finance B.V., the sources said.It became the first case in which tax authorities fined a company by applying a 1986 transfer price taxation law on such guarantee charges by overseas subsidiaries.The sources said the tax bureau found guarantee charges paid by the subsidiary to be less than half that of the bureau's calculated appropriate rates based on risks and other factors, thus identifying differences worth some 1.82 billion yen as income transferred to the subsidiary that should be subject to corporate taxes. Of the transferred income, the bureau calculated the penalty after determining the company had failed to declare some 1.69 billion yen, the sources said.Asahi officials said the Dutch subsidiary, established in 1989, has raised funds through such methods as issuing Euroyen bonds worth between the 20 billion yen and 40 billion yen range on guarantees provided by the parent company.
