Brad Rolph is one of Canada's leading transfer pricing advisers. His practice is focused on helping his clients plan, implement, document and defend their transfer pricing policies that strategically optimize their tax-efficient supply chains. He specializes at pricing complex transactions in particular intercompany financial transactions. He has successfully defended transfer pricing policies under audit, at appeals, and at competent authority. He has also negotiated unilateral Advance Pricing Arrangements (APAs) and coordinated bi-lateral APAs. Brad provides litigation support and expert witness reports to law firms representing clients with transfer price issues. He has been qualified as a transfer pricing expert and given testimony at the Tax Court of Canada.
Mr Rolph was the first economist hired by any of the Big Four accounting firms in Canada to practice exclusively in the area of transfer pricing. He has been advising multinational companies from a wide cross-section of industries for over 24 years. He has dealt with a variety of transfer pricing issues, including factoring discounts, guarantee fees on bank deposits, commodity and foreign exchange risk, performance guarantees, dividend yields on preferred shares, operating margin for limited risk/function distributors, and discounts off industry transaction prices for various grades of pulp.
He is a frequent speaker and author on transfer pricing matters. Recently, he has presented a workshop on financial transactions at a TP Minds conference and about the link between custom valuations and transfer pricing during a series of webinars with the Canadian Association of Importers and Exporters. He has also been published by the International Fiscal Association ("The Future of Transfer Pricing") Euromoney ('GlaxoSmithKline case: Legal form and economic relevance prevail', International Tax Review, April 2013; 'Canada: a year in review,' Euromoney Yearbooks Transfer Pricing Review 2012-13) and Tax Management International ('Limited-Function Distributors: Alternatives to the Canada Revenue Agency's Co-Distributor Approach,' BNA Tax Management Transfer Pricing Report, Vol. 19, No. 2, May 20 2010).
Before he joined Grant Thornton to lead its Canadian transfer pricing practice, Mr Rolph held senior positions at two transfer pricing boutiques and was a partner and the chief economist of the national transfer pricing group at a Big Four firm in Canada. Prior to being a pioneer in Canadian transfer pricing, he was a tax and fiscal policy adviser at the Ontario Ministry of Finance where he specialized in corporate tax, employment taxes, and tax expenditures.
He completed the course requirements and theory comprehensives for a PhD in economics at York University. He holds an honours BA in economics from Wilfred Laurier University and an MA in economics from Queens University.
He has previously been recognized in Euromoney's Guide to the World's Leading Transfer Pricing Advisors in 2001, 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2017.