CRS notification and reporting dates extended

CRS notification and first reporting deadlines have been extended by two months as announced in the Cayman Islands.

The Cayman Islands have announced that they are extending the 2017 deadlines by 2 months, for Cayman Financial Institutions, to notify their status to the Cayman Islands Tax Information Authority (TIA) and file first reports for Common Reporting Standard (CRS) purposes via the Cayman Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI) Portal.

The Cayman AEOI Portal is currently offline, but is expected to come back online by mid to late March 2017 to accept notifications by Cayman Financial Institutions of their CRS status. The CRS return submission functionality on the AEOI Portal is expected to be available from mid to late April 2017. The Cayman TIA has as such provided the following extensions to give Cayman Financial Institutions enough time to achieve their notification and reporting obligations under CRS for the first year, without penalties:

  • CRS Notifications: notifications will be accepted up to 30 June 2017(extended from 30 April 2017).
  • CRS Reporting: the deadline for filing a first CRS report has been extended to 31 July 2017(from 31 May 2017).

Please note: These extensions are only applicable to CRS and therefore the FATCA deadlines for first notifications of reporting FI status (30 April 2017) and FATCA reporting (31 May 2017) for 2017 remain unchanged.

It should be noted that the following provisions have been introduced by the latest Cayman Islands CRS Regulations in December:

  • All Cayman Financial Institutions are required to notify their CRS status to the Cayman TIA, even if they have no reportable accounts.
  • Reporting Financial Institution must establish, implement and comply with written policies and procedures to comply with the CRS Regulations
  • Penalties have increased to up to KYD 50,000