Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act and Common Reporting Standard

Guidance Note on FATCA and CRS incorporates further clarifications that were issued on 19.02.2016 &

26.05.2016 and also includes the updated procedure for registration and submission of reports by the financial institutions.

Purpose of Guidance Note on FATCA and CRS

This Guidance Note is for providing guidance to the Financial Institutions, Regulators and officers of the Income Tax Department for ensuring compliance with the reporting requirements provided in Rules 114F to 114H and Form 61B of the Income-tax Rules, 1962. The Guidance Note is intended to explain the reporting requirements of FATCAand CRS in a simple manner. Since a large part of the Rules is based on IGAbetween India-USA and the CRS on AEOI, the Financial Institutions may refer to the IGA and CRS along with its Commentary to get further understanding of the terms used. In this Guidance Note, reference to the CRS and Commentary has been made at appropriate places. All the stakeholders are requested to provide feedback and suggestions so that Guidance Note can be further updated as per evolving issues in the implementation of FATCA and CRS. An attempt has been made to discuss and describe the various provisions contained in the relevant Rules notified by the Government of India. In case of unlikely event of any inconsistency between the Rules and Guidance Note, the statutory position contained in the Rules shall prevail.

Document Revision List

Date                             Details

31st August, 2015       : Guidance Note on FATCA and CRS

31st December, 2015 :Guidance Note on FATCA and CRS as updated  on 31st December 2015

31st May, 2016            :Guidance Note on FATCA and CRS as updated  on 31st May 2016

Download Guidance Note on FATCA and CRS

India has joined Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement to implement Automatic Exchange of Information based on Common Reporting System (CRS) and is one of the ‘early adopters’ to the international standard on automatic exchange of information. From the year 2017, 56 countries including India, will start sharing tax information on automatic basis and the number will increase to more than 100 in the year 2018. India has also signed Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA) with the USA for implementing the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) enacted by the USA. These developments will enable the Indian tax authorities to automatically receive information of Indian residents who have stashed assets in foreign participating jurisdictions. This exchange of information is reciprocal and India also needs to provide information to other participating jurisdictions about their residents holding assets in India.

For implementation of FATCA and CRS in India, necessary legislative changes have been carried out in the Income-tax Act, 1961  and the Income-tax Rules, 1962 so as to collect and provide relevant information to the foreign tax authorities. A Guidance Note for the purpose of providing guidance to the Financial Institutions, Regulators and officers of the Income Tax Department was issued on 31.08.2015. This was subsequently updated on 31.12.2015. I am happy that third version of Guidance Note is now ready for release. This version incorporates further clarifications that were issued on 19.02.2016 & 26.05.2016 and also includes the updated procedure for registration and submission of reports by the financial institutions.

Related Post

• Clarification on implementation of FATCA and CRS
• CBDT Clarifications for implementation of FATCA and CRS
• Govt Clarifications on implementation FATCA and CRS2
• Govt. notifies provisions of FATCA entered with USA
• CBDT Guidance Note on Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act

relating to  Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act

DOWNLOAD GUIDANCE NOTE ON IMPLEMENTATION OF REPORTING REQUIREMENTS UNDER RULES 114F TO 114H OF THE INCOME-TAX RULES, 1962

Download the Full text of GUIDANCE NOTE