Common Reporting Standard

On 20 October 2014 Ireland along with 50 other countries signed a multilateral competent authority agreement to automatically exchange certain information between tax authorities of signatory jurisdictions. The Common Reporting Standard (CRS) involves the collection of information in relation to financial accounts from financial institutions and the annual transmission of this information between source and residence jurisdictions. The Finance Act 2014 included enabling legislation allowing the Irish tax authorities to introduce regulations to collect data from Irish financial institutions to comply with CRS. Earlier this month the Irish tax authorities circulated draft regulations – Standard for Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information Regulations 2015 – for consideration by interested parties with a view to finalising the regulations before year end i.e. in time for the proposed 1 January 2016 start date.