What is FATCA?

FATCA is the first letter of the ‘Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act’ .

In March 2010, the U.S. Congress passed this normative act to combat the tax evasion of U.S. taxpayers who own accounts and other financial assets outside the United States. To achieve this goal, the United States Government decided to include foreign financial institutions, which could potentially be US taxpayer depository institutions. This normative act is based on the principle of worldwide taxation of every American citizen or of a taxpayer resident in America, a principle according to which the taxpayer must declare Autonomously and Voluntarily income worldwide and specifically income outside the United States .
So every customer of the bank must declare his tax residence, whether in America, Albania or any other country in the world. If the client is an American taxpayer then he has the obligation to complete additional forms under the relevant normative act.

What is the Common Reporting Standard (CRS)?

CRS are the first letters of " The Common Reporting Standard"

The Common Reporting Standard (CRS), drafted in response to the G20 request and approved by the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) Council on 15 July 2014, calls on jurisdictions to obtain information from institutions their financial and automatically exchange that information with other jurisdictions on an annual basis.
The Common Reporting Standard has been implemented in Albania through Decision no. 178, dated 09.03.2016 of the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Albania, which approved the Multilateral Agreement of the Competent Authority, for the "Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information" and Law No. 4/2020, dated 30.01.2020. of the Common Reporting Standard requires periodic annual reporting to the competent tax authorities of the Republic of Albania, of the client data in the Bank, if the client is a Reportable Person, in other words, he is an individual or economic entity, which is identified with a tax residence in at least one of the reporting jurisdiction countries that have signed the agreement.There are currently more than 100 participating countries that have signed this agreement which can also be found on the official website of the OEDC (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). Development).

As for FATCA, every customer of the bank must declare his tax residence, whether in Albania or in any other country in the world. If the client has a tax residence in at least one of the countries participating in the agreement, then the client has the obligation to declare and document in the bank the place of his residence or tax residences (if he is a taxpayer in more than one country), as well as the tax identification number of the relevant jurisdiction of the tax country.

* If the customer refuses to submit the above statement or the required information and / or documentation, the bank may be obliged not to open a customer account or close existing accounts.