Michael Wright
Role: Transfer Pricing Expert
Area of Expertise: Transfer Pricing
Notable Experience:
- Transfer pricing practitioner experienced in supporting multinational clients through complex tax authority challenges, including audits with the Chinese tax authority.
- Skilled at responding to subjective objections from regulators with technically grounded, fact-based defenses.
- Experienced in negotiating workable forward-looking policy agreements with tax authorities to provide clients certainty and close immediate risk.
Overview
Professional Bio
Michael Wright is a transfer pricing expert at Exactera who supports multinational clients through audit defense, controversy, and the realignment of intercompany frameworks as businesses scale. He is known for his ability to bring clarity and calm to complicated situations — whether the trigger is a tax authority pushing back, a business going through major change, or documentation that hasn’t kept pace with growth.
Michael’s approach is straightforward: address each issue, ground the response in regulation and fact, and present evidence clearly enough to find a workable path forward. He focuses on building structures that give companies the freedom to operate and the agility to move when opportunities appear, rather than treating transfer pricing as a back-office compliance function.
Education
- BA Finance – Iona College, New Rochelle, NY
Perspectives
What I’ve learned about corporate tax:
Corporate tax, and more specifically transfer pricing, touches almost every part of a multinational’s operating model. Companies that treat it as such — rather than as a back-office compliance function — tend to have cleaner operations and run into fewer surprises during audits. These companies are also able to be more flexible when the business needs to change direction.
What surprised me the most about transfer pricing:
The amount of judgment calls that are necessary. When I first entered the industry, my perception of TP was a formulaic one — run the benchmark, determine your range, document it. However, I quickly realized that in practice there is a lot of room for interpretation in the regulations. The ability to defend a position often depends not just on the numbers, but on how well you understand and document the actual business.
My greatest strengths are:
The technical aspect of transfer pricing comes with the job, but I believe I’m at my best when things get complicated. Whether it’s a tax authority that’s pushing back, a business going through a major change, or documentation that isn’t kept up the way a company may hope, those are the situations where it’s important to have a calm and steady touch in order to find the path forward and make a difference.