Cayman seeks industry feedback on CRS guidance

Private funds based in the Cayman Islands have the opportunity to weigh in on the domicile’s guidance notes for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Common Reporting Standard (CRS), the deadlines for which are swiftly approaching.

CRS, a new global tax information sharing initiative, builds on the intergovernmental exchange of tax information originally introduced by the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). Under the framework, general partners will report information on foreign limited partners to their local tax agency, who will in turn share the information with those investors’ home tax authorities.

Approximately 90 jurisdictions have signed on to CRS, except for the US, which prefers GPs and other financial institutions to follow the FATCA regime.

The guidance notes issued by the Cayman Ministry for Financial Services (in consultation with the Cayman Islands CRS Working Group) aim to provide practical assistance on aspects of the CRS that are particular to Cayman.

CRS went into effect in January, and the first reporting due date for the standard in Cayman is May 31, 2017. Financial institutions will report the information required under CRS to the Cayman Tax Information Authority using the Automatic Exchange of Online Information (AEOI) portal, the same portal managers currently use to report for FATCA.

The industry is invited to provide feedback on the guidance notes by March 23 to Nangel Kwong in the Ministry’s Department for International Tax Cooperation at nangel.kwong@gov.ky.