Global Tax Controversy & Litigation

Tax enforcement intensity is rising sharply across the Asia Pacific region. Tax authorities in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam and Australia are increasing audit frequency, adopting OECD transfer pricing guidelines, and investing in cross-border information exchange. Baker McKenzie's Asia Pacific Tax Disputes team — Tier 1 in Tax Controversy in Indonesia and Malaysia — helps multinationals manage audit risk proactively and defend effectively when disputes arise. With practitioners embedded in every major commercial hub from Tokyo to Sydney, we provide the local authority and regional coordination that cross-border disputes demand.

Europe's tax dispute landscape is defined by complexity: EU state aid cases, ECJ litigation, aggressive national tax authority enforcement, mandatory disclosure rules, and the patchwork of digital services taxes across markets that have not adopted a unified approach. Baker McKenzie's EMEA Tax Disputes team — Tier 1 in Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Poland, Spain, Türkiye and the UK, and named Tax Disputes Firm of the Year in Italy and Luxembourg (ITR 2024) — brings together criminal defense, VAT controversy, corporate income tax litigation, and treaty-based dispute resolution across more than 20 European jurisdictions.

Latin America presents some of the highest tax dispute risk of any region: lengthy administrative and judicial processes, aggressive transfer pricing enforcement in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, and volatile regulatory environments that require advisors with deep local roots. Baker McKenzie advises across all 20 Latin American jurisdictions, with Tier 1 rankings in Tax Controversy in Mexico, Peru and Venezuela (ITR 2024). Working alongside Trench Rossi Watanabe, our strategic alliance partner in Brazil, we provide unmatched coverage of the region's most active and complex dispute markets.

The IRS is pursuing the largest and most complex corporate tax audits in its history — with the Transfer Pricing Practice, the Large Business & International division, and the Office of Chief Counsel coordinating enforcement across interconnected issues. Baker McKenzie's North America Tax Disputes team — Band 1 in Tax Controversy by Chambers USA and Tier 1 in US Taxes: Contentious by Legal 500, with Tier 1 rankings in California, Illinois, New York and Texas — represents Fortune 500 companies and other multinationals at every stage: IRS exam, Independent Office of Appeals, US Tax Court, federal district court, the Court of Claims, and competent authority / MAP proceedings. Our Canadian Tax Disputes practice provides parallel depth before the CRA and Tax Court of Canada.

We have litigated some of the most significant cases in the United States, including: 

• Facebook, Inc. & Subsidiaries v. Commissioner, 164 T.C. No. 9 (U.S. Tax Court, 2025): A landmark US Tax Court decision on the valuation of intangible property transferred to a foreign subsidiary under a cost sharing arrangement, in which the Court upheld the validity of the 2009 cost sharing regulations while rejecting the IRS's application of the income method — one of the most significant transfer pricing cases of recent years involving billions of dollars in disputed tax.
• AbbVie Inc. and Subsidiaries v. Commissioner, 164 T.C. No. 10 (U.S. Tax Court, 2025): Baker McKenzie secured a pivotal US Tax Court ruling that AbbVie's approximately $1.6 billion break fee paid to Shire plc upon the abandonment of a proposed merger was deductible as an ordinary business expense under Section 162 — not a capital loss under Section 1234A — significantly limiting the scope of that provision and establishing important precedent for the tax treatment of termination fees in corporate M&A transactions.
• Sysco Corp. v. Commissioner, No. 5728-23 (U.S. Tax Court, 2024): A significant TCJA foreign tax credit case, litigated in parallel with FedEx, in which Baker McKenzie secured a ruling allowing Sysco to claim a $324 million dividends-received deduction for its section 78 dividend, clarifying the application of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act's effective date provisions for fiscal-year taxpayers.
• FedEx Corp. & Subsidiaries v. United States, No. 2:20-cv-02794 (U.S. District Court, W.D. Tennessee, 2023): A major foreign tax credit victory in which the US District Court for the Western District of Tennessee struck down a Treasury regulation as contrary to the plain text of the Tax Code, holding that FedEx was entitled to foreign tax credits on offset earnings under the TCJA's transition tax provisions and awarding an $89 million refund — a decision with broad implications for similarly situated multinationals.
• Pilgrim's Pride Corp. v. Commissioner, 779 F.3d 311 (U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit, 2015): Baker McKenzie reversed a Tax Court opinion before the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, establishing that Section 1234A does not apply to a taxpayer's abandonment of a capital asset — a foundational interpretation of the ordinary-versus-capital loss distinction that directly informed the Tax Court's reasoning in the AbbVie decision a decade later.
• Veritas Software Corp. v. Commissioner, 133 T.C. 297 (U.S. Tax Court, 2009): A landmark transfer pricing victory in which the US Tax Court rejected an IRS adjustment of over $1.675 billion relating to a cost sharing buy-in payment, finding the IRS's valuation theory — which sought to treat the transfer of intangibles as akin to a sale of an entire business — arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable, and upholding the taxpayer's use of the comparable uncontrolled transaction method.