The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development proposed a Common Reporting Standard (CRS) for the Automatic Exchange of Information with the aim of improving international tax compliance and preventing tax evasion, through the automatic exchange of information between countries that implement CRS, one of which is the Republic of Cyprus.
Recently, the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Cyprus issued an Order under No. 477/2015 regarding the obligations of the Financial Institutions to follow CRS and as from the 1st of January 2016, Cyprus is expected to exchange information under the CRS for the first time in 2017 covering the year 2016.
In a nutshell financial institutions including banks, forex companies, brokers, collective investment vehicles, insurance companies and others, in each participating country have to collect and transmit to the local tax authorities relevant information about their clients who are tax residents in another jurisdiction. The local tax authorities will then automatically exchange this information with the other participating countries.
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