Standard for Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information in Tax Matters

G20 Leaders at their meeting in September 2013 fully endorsed the OECD proposai for a truly global model for automatic exchange of information and invited the OECD, working with G20 countries, to develop such a new single standard for automatic exchange of information, including the technical modalities, to better fight tax evasion and ensure tax compliance. The Standard, developed in response to the G20 request and approved by the OECD Council on 15 July 2014, calls on jurisdictions to obtain information from their financial institutions and automatically exchange that information with other jurisdictions on an annual basis. It sets out the financial account information to be exchanged, the financial institutions required to report, the different types of accounts and taxpayers covered, as well as common due diligence procedures to be followed by financial institutions. Part I gives an overview of the Standard. Part II contains the text of the Model Competent Authority Agreement (Model CAA) and the Common Reporting and Due Diligence Standard (CRS). Part III contains the Commentaries on the Model CAA and the CRS as well as a number of Annexes. The Standard draws extensively on earlier work of the OECD in the area of automatic exchange of information. It incorporates progress made within the European Union, as well as global anti-money laundering standards, with the intergovernmental implementation of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) having acted as a catalyst for the move towards automatic exchange of information in a multilateral context.