Russia signs up to OECD's reporting standard
Russia has agreed to automatically share financial account information, as set out by the OECD under its Common Reporting Standard (CRS).
The signing took place earlier this month at a meeting of tax officials in Beijing, according to an OECD statement, which noted that Israel joined Russia at the event in becoming a signatory to the key CRS framework document, known as the “Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement”.
The two countries, however, didn’t sign a similar agreement which would have committed them to exchanging country-by-country reports with other CRS signatories.
In a recent online report, Bloomberg BNA noted that Russia “likely held off” agreeing to country-by-country reports because it is still in the early stages of developing its own country-by-country reporting legislation.
In January, International Investment reported that Russia had introduced a new requirement that obliged foreign banks around to the world to notify the Russian authorities whenever a Russian national opened a bank account with one of their branches. PwC dubbed the new regulation “the Russian FATCA”.
The new requirement was enacted on 18 December 2015, but has so far received little attention in the media.
As reported, the Common Reporting Standard is a global effort, being coordinated by the OECD, to create an international, automatic, multi-party information exchange network. Thus far, 82 countries have signed the CRS Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement, with the United States one of the few major countries not to have signed up yet.
To read the Bloomberg BNA story, click here.
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