IEIM400080 - Background: Common Reporting Standard
The Common Reporting Standard
The Common Reporting Standard (CRS) is the result of the drive by the G20 nations to develop a global standard for the automatic exchange of financial account information. Developed by the OECD, the CRS aims to maximise efficiency and reduce costs for Financial Institutions by drawing heavily on the approach taken to implementing FATCA.
There are some distinct differences between the two systems, driven to a large extent by the multilateral nature of the CRS compared to FATCA and the US specific features of FATCA, such as tax residency in the USA including citizenship and the FATCA withholding tax which introduces additional features into the reporting process that are not needed when implementing the CRS.
In October 2014, 45 jurisdictions signed a multilateral competent authority agreement to start exchanging information using the CRS framework from 2017. A further 4 signed the same agreement with a commitment to start exchanging information in 2018. Since then more jurisdictions have either signed the multilateral competent authority agreement or made a commitment to automatic exchange, such that now over 100 jurisdictions exchange information on financial accounts. The regulations that require UK Financial Institutions to collect, maintain and report information for exchange with these jurisdictions are (as amended by , , , , , and , , , , and ).
In 2023 the OECD updated the CRS to take account of developments in financial markets and amend reporting requirements to make the data more useful for tax administrations. In November 2023 the UK along with many other countries committed to implement the amendments to the CRS in time for first reporting in 2027. The amendments to the CRS, referred to in this guidance as 鈥淐RS2.0鈥� for convenience, are implemented in UK law by The International Tax Compliance (Amendment) Regulations 2025 and take effect from 1 January 2026.
The current list of participating jurisdictions for automatic exchange under the CRS can be found at IEIM400090.