Common Reporting Standard (CRS)

The Common Reporting Standard (CRS) is an internationally agreed-upon standard for the automatic transmission of financial account information for tax purposes between countries to better combat tax evasion and assure tax compliance. Since September 2018, Singapore has committed to implementing the CRS and has been exchanging bank account information with partner jurisdictions.

You must register for CRS with IRAS if you are a Reporting Singapore Financial Institution (SGFI). In addition, you must do due diligence on all Financial Accounts you manage and provide the necessary account information to IRAS in an annual return in a timely and correct manner.

If you have an account with a Reporting SGFI, you may be impacted by CRS in various ways. See the Financial Institutions’ Basic Information for Account Holders for further information.

Overview of the CRS

The Common Reporting Standard (CRS) is a globally agreed-upon standard for automatically exchanging financial account information for tax purposes between jurisdictions. The CRS is designed to detect and deter tax evasion by tax residents of jurisdictions that utilise offshore banks and other financial accounts to avoid paying their taxes.

The CRS improves the FATCA reporting framework to increase efficiency and lower costs for implementing jurisdictions and their financial institutions. More than 100 jurisdictions have accepted the CRS, including major financial centres like Dubai, Hong Kong, Luxembourg, and Switzerland, and have begun AEOI in either 2017 or 2018.

The CRS outlines:

• the information about financial accounts to be shared between jurisdictions;
• the financial institutions (FIs) are obligated to provide this information to their tax authorities;
• the many sorts of accounts and taxpayers that are included; and
• FIs are required to execute customer due diligence procedures.

The CRS Regulations under the Income Tax Act of Singapore require and authorise all Reporting SGFIs to implement the necessary processes and systems to gather financial account information from their account holders. 

Financial account information relating to tax residents of Singapore’s exchange partners will be reported to IRAS by notifying SGFIs. The data will then be shared with Singapore’s exchange partners by IRAS.