EBF advisor: Roger Kaiser
Publication date: 2 August 2017
In its response, the EBF calls for the US to provide pragmatic solutions and guidelines for Foreign Financial Institutions under FATCA.
The following points are highlighted:
– If no US TIN is communicated and reasons for its non-availability are not communicated by the customer, the Financial Institution should be allowed to report the date of birth of the customer if he is a natural person and a commercial register number or VAT identification number if it is an entity.
– Like under the Common Reporting Standard, Financial Institutions should make reasonable efforts to receive the US TIN from pre-existing customers within 2 years after the accounts of the customer have been identified as reportable.
– Reasonable efforts consist for instance of asking the relevant questions to the customer in person or per mail, per telephone, e-mail or other tools such as SMS messaging.
– If the US TIN has not been obtained, the customer should be contacted once per year.
– If it has made reasonable efforts, the Financial Institution should keep its FATCA-compliant status and should not be subject to any penalty even if US TINs are missing. The scope of the default reporting should be limited only to entities for which US indicia have been identified in relation to the entity or one or more of its Controlling Persons based on AML/KYC or other information.