OECD Paris meeting: ‘super-FATCA’ is coming soon

The news that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is working to develop a draft common reporting standard (CRS) and a model competent authority agreement (‘model CAA’) to enable the multilateral automatic exchange of financial account information should be welcomed by financial institutions and account holders. The OECD is well placed to develop a standardised solution and this is important because without standardisation there is a danger of fragmentation of approach design and implementation with associated cost ramifications for all parties.

The OECD’s work is born out of the FATCA initiative developed by the US and by the subsequent drive arising from the call by the G5 (France Germany Italy Spain and the UK) to develop a multilateral automatic tax information exchange pilot. Since the date...