The Ministry of Finance states that, in order to implement automatic exchange of financial account information, financial institutions shall comply with the Common Reporting Standard (CRS), and from this year on, during the period between June 1 and June 30, they shall report through the internet relevant financial account information in respect of a previous calendar year. The “CRS Financial Institution Portal” (hereinafter as “CRS Portal”) of the Ministry of Finance has been launched on the website of https://www.cfi.mof.gov.tw.
The Ministry of Finance explains that financial institutions may refer to the “Download Tools” area on the CRS Portal, downloading the “XML Schema User Guide,” Frequently Asked Questions, and the off-line preparation tool for early preparation. The functions of “Registration” and “Upload and Report” will be ready for use on March 1, 2020. Reporting Financial Institutions and their Agencies or Agents (hereinafter as “the Reporters”) may apply for account registration from March 1, 2020. From this year on, the Reporters may upload and report test data in March and April, and shall complete the reporting in June. The reporting files shall be produced in line with the “XML Schema User Guide.” For financial institutions with fewer entries of reporting data (e.g., less than 20 entries), they may use the online preparation function provided by the CRS Portal, inputting reporting data and generate the CRS Return in XML format.
The Ministry of Finance states that, in order to meet the new international standard on the transparency of tax information, as well as prevent from being listed as a non-cooperative jurisdiction and having a detrimental impact on competitiveness, the CRS regime has been implemented since November 2017. It is appreciated that the financial institutions are supporting and complying with the policy and the regulations. The Ministry further explains that financial institutions started performing due diligence procedures from January 1, 2019. They identified the financial accounts needed to be reported (e.g., the financial account with account holders who are tax residents of Japan or Australia), and will report information of those accounts in June from this year. If a financial institution confirms that all accounts it maintains are not reportable after completing the due diligence procedures, it still has to register with the CRS Portal and submit a nil-report in June. It is expected that automatic exchange of financial account information with Reportable Jurisdictions (Japan and Australia for this year) will be carried out in September from this year.
The Ministry of Finance reminds that, although most of the financial institutions have experiences on reporting financial account information under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) released by the U.S., the CRS has its own rules for due diligence procedures and reporting format which are commonly implemented worldwide and not exactly the same as the ones under FATCA. Therefore, financial institutions are encouraged to visit the CRS Portal in advance to download the relevant User Guide and test the reporting functions, as well as prepare reporting files earlier so as to complete the first reporting smoothly and in a timely manner.
Contact person: Ms. Yu- Hsuan Wang, Section Chief.
Contact Number:(02)2322-8183