By KYIV. Nov 20 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The procedure for reporting financial institutions (PFIs) to inform about reporting accounts in accordance with the Common Standard on Reporting and Due Diligence for Financial Account Information (CRS), approved by order of the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine No. 516 of September 25, 2023, took effect on Monday.
“The order established that the first report for the reporting period, which begins on July 1, 2023 and ends on December 31, 2023 (the first reporting period), is submitted to the financial institution before July 1, 2024. In the future, the reporting period will be considered the previous calendar year,” the ministry’s press service said in the statement.
The Finance Ministry said the procedure establishes requirements for the form and format of the report and determines the procedure for its completion and submission to the State Tax Service (STS) for further transfer of information to the competent authorities of reporting jurisdictions in accordance with the CRS Multilateral Agreement.
The report also provides information about all reporting accounts for the reporting period. If the PFI does not have financial accounts for the reporting year, or if, after applying appropriate due diligence procedures, the PFI does not identify any financial accounts reportable for purposes of the CRS Multilateral Agreement in the reporting year, then the institution must provide a “null” report.
It is clarified that the report is generated using the CRS XML Schema (v2.0), developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and is used in the process of automatic exchange of information between competent authorities. The XML schema of the report will be published on the official tax web portal.
In addition, the procedure determines the requirements for filling out report elements, descriptions of reference books, rules for filling out and submitting an amended report, established on the basis of the requirements of the guidance for tax authorities on the XML schema of the General Reporting Standard, available on the OECD website.
“The Ministry of Finance of Ukraine draws the attention of reporting financial institutions to the obligation to register with the State Tax Service. At the same time, organizations that had the status of a financial institution as of June 30, 2023 are required to register with the State Tax Service by December 31, 2023,” the department said.
If an organization did not have the status of a financial institution as of June 30, 2023, or was created (registered) after July 1, 2023, it submits an application for registration with the State Tax Service as a financial institution within 60 calendar days after establishing its status, the Finance Ministry said.
According to the ministry, the CRS common reporting standard is an international standard adopted by the OECD Council on July 15, 2014. It requires implementing countries to collect information from financial institutions about the financial accounts of account holders and to exchange such information annually on an automatic basis with partner jurisdictions under the MCAA CRS Multilateral Agreement.
As of January 2023, more than 110 jurisdictions are participants in the international multilateral automatic exchange of financial account information, including all member states of the European Union.
In order for Ukraine to join this international system of automatic exchange of information, the country’s government sent a letter to the OECD Secretariat in August 2021 with the official intention to implement the common CRS reporting standard and join the CRS Multilateral Agreement.
To ensure compliance with international obligations, in August 2022, the State Tax Service of Ukraine joined the CRS multilateral agreement, which provides for ensuring compliance of national legislation and practice with the requirements of this standard.
