On 13 February 2014 the OECD released the „Standard for Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information – Common Reporting Standard (CRS)”. The aim of CRS is to reduce tax evasion by taxpayers using offshore financial accounts.
The Common Reporting Standard provides for a worldwide automatic data exchange between national tax authorities. It is based on the FATCA Model 1 Intergovernmental Agreement.
According to CRS the jurisdictions have to obtain information from their financial institutions and automatically exchange that information with other jurisdictions on an annual basis. The Standard sets out the financial account information to be exchanged, the financial institutions that need to report, the different types of accounts and taxpayers covered, as well as common due diligence procedures to be followed by financial institutions.