The first round of UK CRS filings didn’t go quite as well as some tax professionals at financial institutions thought it would.
Just before the filing deadline, a survey of FIs revealed an air of confidence about the first transmittal, despite the fact that the first FATCA filing in the US was challenging. But participants at a recent Sovos roundtable event in London indicated that their first experience with CRS was not easy after all.
Manual Reporting Processes Prove Insufficient
“This meant pulling people off other projects, which then had a knock-on effect,” one participant said, for example. “My colleagues are adamant this can’t happen again.”
And failure is not an option: “If you get this wrong, it’s going to hit the bottom line,” another participant said. “Big time.”
The problems FIs encountered ranged from inefficiencies in manual reporting processes to trouble understanding requirements from different jurisdictions. The consensus was that participants will have to rethink their reporting processes before diving into next year’s transmittal, with a focus on centralizing and automating processes.
As one participant said of stretching 2017 filing processes into 2018, “You can’t get to there from here.”
Take Action
Read the roundtable whitepaper for more on what FIs encountered in their first CRS filings and how they can prepare themselves for future transmittals.
Watch video interviews from the event to hear more from the participants.
Learn more about the Sovos AEOI solution.
