In the course of tax audits sometimes the question arises whether and if so on which legal grounds tax authorities are authorised to require compliance with the standards of the OECD transfer pricing guidelines; taxpayers argue that the guidelines are neither in the nature of a binding multinational convention nor of statutory domestic law. The article discusses how the guidelines, being in fact no more than a non-binding OECD-recommendation, nevertheless obtain legal importance within the Austrian tax jurisdiction. There is first of all the legal impact on the application of treaty law, which can be considered approved by the Austrian Supreme Administrative Court. But legal influence exists also in relation to domestic law. If Austria has taken part in the approval of an OECD-recommendation by its Minister of Finance it follows from this that the same Minister cannot be expected to interpret his own domestic law in contrary to what he has recommended at OECD level, provided the wording of the domestic law allows for an interpretation which is in conformity with the OECD standards. If therefore the wording of a particular domestic provision of law permits two different interpretati...