The provisions of the Polish Act of 9 March 2017 on Tax information Exchange with Other Countries (Journal of Laws of 2017, item 648) obligate the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (Europe) S.A. Poland Branch to implement the regulations related to the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) and to collect the information needed to report within the CRS.

The scope of regulation

CRS is aimed at exchange of information in the field of taxation between financial institutions worldwide. The system is based on the standards developed by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), which allow to collect information about the tax residents and exchange between tax authorities of the participating countries. Poland was obliged to implement the standard under the Council Directive 2014/107/EU of 9 December 2014 amending Directive 2011/16/EU as regards mandatory automatic exchange of information in the field of taxation.

The obligations of the banks and Client’s self-certification

The banks in Poland are obliged to report to the local tax authorities the information about the account balance of the Clients, who are tax residents of the participating countries within the CRS. One of the banks’ obligations is annual reporting of the above information, which are submitted to the relevant resident countries.

According to the CRS requirements, the Bank collects the information evidencing the tax residency of the Clients: the new Clients opening the account will be required to fill the self-certification forms; the current Clients will be in certain situations asked to provide the documents evidencing the tax residency (including self-certification). The part of the self-certification for the entities is information on the person controlling the account holder (the beneficial owner).

Further information can be found on the website of the OECD: http://www.oecd.org/tax/automatic-exchange/common-reporting-standard/.