Rule 119 — Renewing an agreement.
Rule 119 settles how an existing advance pricing agreement is renewed. A request for renewal may be made as a new application in Form No. 54, and the same procedure as outlined in these rules applies, with one exception: the pre-filing consultation referred to in rule 105 is not required.
The rule adds nothing else. It sets no separate renewal window, no shortened processing period and no different set of conditions.
An advance pricing agreement runs for a fixed term, and something has to say what happens at its end. Rule 119 answers that the parties do not renew in some abbreviated way — they start again on the same form and through the same machinery — while sparing them the one step whose purpose, an introductory discussion of a case not yet known to the authorities, has already been served.
The practical weight of the rule is in the words "as a new application": renewal is not a continuation, so the fee, the processing under rule 109 and the closure provisions all apply again as they would to a first-time applicant. Dropping the pre-filing consultation shortens the front of the process but does not shorten anything behind it. Because the rule fixes no timetable for making the renewal request, the applicant carries the risk of a gap between the expiry of the existing agreement and the entry into a new one.
A company holds an advance pricing agreement covering a covered transaction and its term is running out. It files Form No. 54 as a renewal request under rule 119. It does not seek a pre-filing consultation under rule 105, which the rule excepts, but everything after that — the application being allowed to be proceeded with, the meetings and document requests, and execution by the Board — runs exactly as it did the first time.
A holder of an advance pricing agreement meets it when the agreement's term is ending and a fresh Form No. 54 has to be filed to continue the certainty.
Request for renewal of an agreement may be made as a new application in Form No. 54 for agreement, using the same procedure as outlined in these rules except pre-filing consultation as referred to in rule 105.