Cayman Islands Tax Reporting – The latest on FATCA and CRS

There is mixed news on this subject.

FATCA

Less than two weeks before foreign governments were due to begin reporting American taxpayers’ bank accounts to the US Internal Revenue Service, the US Treasury Department has announced the deadline has been put back until 30 September 2016. The one-year deadline extension applies to all jurisdictions that have signed a Model 1 inter-governmental agreement to implement FATCA including the Cayman Islands

In addition the U.S. is pushing back the start of withholding for many types of transactions from 2017 until 2019.

CRS

Regulations have recently come into effect to introduce the Common Reporting Standard (CRS), formally referred to as the Standard for Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information. The Regulations, which are more far reaching than FATCA, provide that with effect from 1st January 2016 Financial Institutions in the Cayman Islands must have in place arrangements to identify and from May 2017 report on accounts held on behalf of persons resident in any of a number of jurisdictions which have signed up to the CRS.

In due course more guidance will be available and the list of participating jurisdictions appears on the website for the OECD (Organisation for Economic cooperation and development) which is coordinating the exercise.