I moved a few years ago from Italy to the UK. Recently, my Italian bank has sent me an email saying that they were going to report me to the CRS.
Do I have to worry about it? What does that change for my situation?
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1 Answer
You don't have to worry about it assuming you're not using your accounts for tax evasion or other illegal purposes and it doesn't change anything about your situation. As explained here for example, the CRS requires banks to report the details of non-domestic customers:
CRS is the Common Reporting Standard introduced by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to increase financial transparency globally and combat international tax evasion. CRS accomplishes this by requiring financial institutions in participating countries to report non-resident account details to relevant member countries.
The information that financial institutions collect will be sent to participating countries each year. This information includes personal details, such as a residential address, citizenship, residency, taxpayer identification numbers, date of birth, and place of birth.
In most cases, financial institutions will only send this information to an individual's country of residence. However, many banks claim they also share information with a person’s country of citizenship (regardless of residency) to make sure all accounts are correctly reported.
In doing so, the bank is effectively protecting itself from claims that it did not report financial records correctly. But, it also means that non-resident accounts may be reported to a person's country of citizenship for no particular reason.
Of course, if a person has their residency in order and has correctly followed their country’s requirements for becoming a non-resident, they will have no problem with this. Besides concerns with how their home country uses this information and possible privacy concerns.
