Thursday, September 17, 2026

Quantifying AI's Error Rate in Transfer Pricing Benchmarking

A study in The International Tax Journal tested multi-agent AI systems against simulated data covering twenty MNE cases across three sectors, comparing deployment models across eleven countries. Agentic AI cut processing time by 98% and performed deeper functional analysis than a human team in the same window. The study also recorded a 15% error rate in complex functional characterizations, a 22% irrelevance rate in comparable selection, and a 15% hallucination rate in legal citations.

These figures matter for Indian practice because the comparable set is the most contested element in most disputes reaching the ITAT, on turnover filters, FAR mismatches, and functional dissimilarity. A 22% irrelevance rate applied to a twelve-company set implies two or three comparables may not withstand scrutiny. A 15% citation hallucination rate is more serious, since courts elsewhere have sanctioned practitioners for AI-fabricated citations. An ABA Tax Section panel on Section 482 similarly concluded that practitioners remain responsible for method selection and defensibility despite AI assistance.

Until verification protocols match these error rates, AI-assisted local files and benchmarking studies warrant the same partner-level scrutiny as any junior draft, if not more.pemesan

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