In an effort to improve global tax transparency the Governments globally have adopted the Standard of Automatic Exchange of Information developed by the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) known as Common Reporting Standard (CRS).
In order to comply with the requirements of the CRS, Tax Authorities will require that financial institutions confirm their clients' Jurisdictions(s) of Tax Residence and Respective Tax Identification Number, if applicable, among other fields where applicable.
The OECD Common Reporting Standards is a further international initiative to improve tax transparency and is based on the development of a single global standard for the automatic exchange of information between tax authorities.
As of December 2015, 96 jurisdictions are adopring CRS, of which 77 jurisdictions have signed a Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement and the number is constantly increasing. A full list of the hurisdictions that have committed to participate can be found at the following link:
http://www.oecd.org/tax/transparency/AEOI-commitments.pdf.
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