Common Reporting Standard

In May 2014, forty-seven countries tentatively agreed on a "common reporting standard", formally referred to as the Standard for Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information: an agreement to share information on residents' assets and incomes automatically in conformation with the standard.[2] Endorsing countries included all 34 OECD countries, as well as Argentina, Brazil, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, India, Indonesia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and South Africa.[2]

In September 2014, the G-20 major economies, at their meeting in Cairns, Australia, issued a G20 Common Reporting Standard implementation plan.[3]

The new system was intended to transfer all relevant information automatically and systematically. The agreement has informally been referred to as GATCA (the global version of FATCA)",[1] but "CRS is not just an extension of FATCA".[4]

As of October 2014, 51 countries had signed up to the Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement (MCAA), to automatically exchange information based on Article 6 of the Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters[5] The agreement specifies the details of what information will be exchanged and when, as set out in the Standard.[6]

As of July 2015, 53 jurisdictions had signed the agreement to automatically exchange information;[7] As of July 2016 83 jurisdictions had signed the agreement.[6]

All European Union (EU) countries, China, India, Hong Kong, Russia and 109 countries altogether have agreed to become signatories.[8] Yet many countries will not participate in the automatic information exchange.[9] Many of those that have not signed are small countries. In April 2016, shortly after the release of the controversial Panama papers, Panama adopted the Multilateral Competent Authorities Agreement (MCAA)[10] and signed the MCAA in Paris in January 2018 joining the CRS MCAA as the 98th jurisdiction.[11] In the United States a different cross-border tax compliance approach is promoted through the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). The U.S. receives information relating to US citizens' accounts from many countries due to the compliance requirements of the FATCA. The United States, in many cases, will reciprocate by sharing banking data with countries for accounts which their citizens hold in the U.S., but not automatically as is required by the U.S.[12]

OECD allows the participating countries to determine what accounts are reportable. "The term "reportable account" means a [Jurisdiction A] reportable account or a [Jurisdiction B] reportable account, depending on the context, provided it has been identified as such pursuant to due diligence procedures, consistent with the Annex, in place in [Jurisdiction A] or [Jurisdiction B]."[14]

This means that either jurisdiction may negotiate and determine its own reportable accounts in its agreement.

Of the 154 countries which have signed on the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes,[16] the following countries have not signed on to the CRS:[17]

(Incomplete list as of June 2017) Armenia, Azerbaijan, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Gabon, Georgia, Guatemala, Guyana, Jamaica, Kenya, Kingdom of Lesotho, Liberia, Maldives, Mauritania, Moldova, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, North Macedonia, Senegal, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Ukraine, United States.[17]

(List as of June 2019) 59 countries have not signed the CRS Standard yet:[18][19][20] Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Bangladesh, Belarus, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Burundi, Central African Republic, Comoros, Congo, Cuba, East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, Georgia, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Honduras, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Libya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Nicaragua, North Korea, Palau, São Tomé and Príncipe, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Syria, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uzbekistan, Vatican City State, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

In 2016, a legal expert complained that "The CRS has a much more ambitious scope, however, and modelling the standard on the FATCA rules has created problems for implementing it in Europe".[21] And a "private sector advocacy group representing financial services and law firms" went even further seeing a "showdown" between the two regimes.[22]

Transparency groups have reacted in various ways, some of them criticising how developing countries were (not) considered and involved.[23] Collecting and providing information can be so costly and difficult for developing countries obviating participation in the scheme. Instead of offering a period of non-reciprocity, where developing countries could simply receive financial data, the only mention of non-reciprocity agreements is catering to tax havens.[23]

While tax havens will have to provide some information, they can use a number of loopholes (unequal standards for how information is shared e.g.) and also elect not to receive any info in return.[23] The Financial Transparency Coalition criticised the access cost of $73 to download OECD’s report itself, being "a perfect illustration of why this process needs to include low income countries from the start".[23]

The OECD reviews investment mechanisms worldwide to identify risks in compliance and loopholes. It opened a website for whistle-blowers to anonymously report CRS violations including for pensions, insurance, and citizenship-for-sale tools. The OECD has investigated and labeled specifically as "low-risk" an investment tool in Hong Kong called ORS (Occupational Retirement Scheme) which is classified as a "non-reporting financial institutions" and can be used to bypass CRS as it does not need reporting under CRS guidelines and can be used to effectively be like a shell company.[24]