Common Reporting Standard: The blockchain-based assets case

par Trang Fernandez-Leenknecht, Trang Fernandez-Leenknecht, publié le 15/11/2019

Affiliation : Université de Genève

Categories : Droit bancaire & financier, Droit européen, Droit fiscal, Droit international

The OECD and G20 countries together with the EU, developed the new global model for the Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information in Tax Matters (AEoI), based on a Common Reporting Standard (CRS), to facilitate cross-border tax transparency on financial accounts held abroad and to equip tax authorities with an effective tool to tackle offshore tax evasion by providing a greater level of information.

AEoI, beneficial ownership registration, and tax administrations may undergo a revolutionary development as a result of blockchain technology. The benefits of this technology are expected to help reduce the number of intermediaries, improving transparency and increasing security in policy. Blockchain is essentially a system to encrypt information and share databases, based on a consensus mechanism among trusted parties to certify the information and validate transactions without a central authority to authenticate the information.

Automatic information reporting models, such as the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and the AEoI/CRS, have been developed based on years of experience in ‘traditional’ financial services. Blockchain technology service providers and blockchain-based assets (‘crypto’) are new, and regulators struggle to understand how they work. Measures for crypto businesses should be tailored to address the unique risks and challenges of the crypto market.

The objective of this paper is to analyse the application of the CRS for AEoI purposes in light of the spectacular rise of crypto-assets in the economic and tax spheres and explore possible paths for solutions within the scope of the OECD BEPS Project.

Citation : Fernandez-Leenknecht Trang, Trang Fernandez-Leenknecht, Common Reporting Standard: The blockchain-based assets case, in lawded.ch.