A Reporting Cayman Islands Financial Institution (FI) is required to provide notification to the Cayman Islands Tax Information Exchange Authority (TIA) of certain prescribed details, and to identify a Principal Point of Contact (PPOC) who must be authorised to serve as the PPOC by an appropriate person in the FI.
An FI for which 1 January 2015 to 31 December 2015 is the first reporting period under FATCA is required to provide this notification on or before 30 April 2016. Click here to access the template letter to the TIA prepared by Ogier. Our template letter covers both FATCA and UK FATCA.
An FI for which 1 July 2014 to 31 December 2014 was the first reporting period under FATCA and which made the appropriate notification to the TIA in 2015 does not need to re-notify unless any of the prescribed details or the PPOC have changed.
The TIA has advised that an FI that made the appropriate notification to the TIA in 2015 in respect of FATCA may extend that notification to cover UK FATCA. This must be done on or before 30 April 2016. It is expected that details of how to do this will be made available in early April 2016 when the UK FATCA TIA Portal is opened and the User Guide is released.
Reporting
After notification, the FATCA reports themselves must be submitted by 31 May 2016. The relevant reporting period under FATCA is 1 January 2015 to 31 December 2015. The relevant reporting period under UK FATCA is 1 July 2014 to 31 December 2015. Nil returns are not required to be filed but may be filed if the Financial Institution chooses.
All accounts held during the reporting period that have been identified as Reportable Accounts must be reported. Where the review of an account has not been concluded, and the deadline for completing such review has not yet passed, there is no obligation to include such account in the report. Where the review has been completed and the account has been identified as a Reportable Account, it must be included in the report.
Accounts for which the review deadline has not yet passed are:
- Pre-existing entity accounts with an account balance exceeding $250,000 as of 30 June 2015, for which the deadline is 30 June 2016; and
- Pre-existing entity accounts with an account balance not exceeding $250,000 as of 30 June 2015 but exceeding $1,000,000 as of December 2015 or any subsequent year, for which the deadline is 30 June of the following year.
CRS
There are no notification or reporting obligations under CRS until 2017.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
