How to use CRS regulations
How to use CRS regulations
Introduction
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) developed Common Reporting Standard (CRS) in 2014 with the goal to fight tax evasion. CRS is a global information standard for automatically exchanging financial account information between tax authorities.
Financial institutions located in CRS participating jurisdictions1 must comply with the relevant CRS requirements, which aim at identifying the financial assets that tax residents of a participating jurisdiction hold abroad and having them reported to the relevant local tax authorities.
CRS is also nicknamed as “the FATCA for the rest of the world.”
1 For more information and an updated list of CRS participating jurisdictions, see "CRS jurisdictions."
Scope of CRS regulations supported in CLM
CLM supports with questionnaires – one for entities and one for individuals – only the determination of the tax status of the customer, which is the steppingstone from which other CRS requirements (for example, reporting) derive.
The questionnaires are prepared based on the Model Competent Authority Agreement (MCAA), which provides not only the legal framework for the exchange of the information, but it also defines the information to be transferred, its transfer modalities, and the responsibilities of authorities. Since country tax laws and CRS guidance may modify aspects of the customer onboarding and review process, financial institutions must ensure that they are complying with all relevant local laws and CRS requirements and therefore they need to configure the questionnaires accordingly.
Triggers
Out-of-the-box, CLM triggers the displaying of the CRS questionnaire in every customer onboarding, regardless of the products requested by the customer. The majority of financial institutions, in fact, prefers to have in the customer file, already at onboarding, the relevant tax classification in case the customer falls afterwards under the relevant CRS reporting obligations.
However, CLM can support the other approach in the market where the relevant CRS questionnaire is displayed only as per strictly dictated by the regulation, i.e., when the product requested by the customer falls within the definition of “financial account.”
In both approaches, the financial institution that must perform the tax classification of the customer is the one located in the country where the product is booked, if that country is a CRS participating jurisdiction. However, if the financial institution of the product booking location is a branch in a non-CRS participating jurisdiction, but their Head office instead is, then that branch must also be CRS compliant.
How and where to configure triggers
As of CLM and KYC 8.6, the applicability logic for CRS questionnaires can be configured using the Decision table ‘ApplicabilityMatrix’. For information on general configuration of this rule, see the Applicability matrix section of the implementation guide.
The core decision logic is covered in the When rule ‘ApplyCRSCaseWhen’.
Implementations based on CLM and KYC 8.5 or earlier versions will use the Decision table ‘TaxRegulationsMasterAppliesWhen’. For information on general configuration, see the KYC Type Applicability. This also uses the main decision logic in the When rule ‘ApplyCRSCaseWhen’.
You will need to configure the specific CRS applicability logic for your financial Institution in the above-mentioned rules.