To fill out the CRS self-certification form, choose the version that matches the account holder (individual, entity, or controlling person), enter your legal name and address, list every country where you are tax resident along with the Tax Identification Number issued by each, then sign and date the declaration. Your bank cannot finish opening the account until it holds a valid self-certification, and 116 jurisdictions now exchange the data collected through this form under the Common Reporting Standard.1Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. CRS Individual Self-Certification Form The form itself is short. The mistakes are almost always in the residency and TIN section.
Pick the Right Version First
The OECD publishes three model forms, and every bank’s version is built from one of them. Filling out the wrong one means starting over.
- The individual form is for personal account holders, sole traders, and sole proprietors. On a joint account, each holder completes a separate individual form.1Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. CRS Individual Self-Certification Form
- The entity form is for accounts held by a company, partnership, trust, or foundation. It adds a classification section that the individual form does not have.2Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Entity Tax Residency Self-Certification Form
- The controlling person form is for natural persons who control a passive non-financial entity or an investment entity in a non-participating jurisdiction. It accompanies the entity form, it does not replace it. The bank handling the entity’s account will tell you whether it is needed.3Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Controlling Person Tax Residency Self-Certification Form
Each financial institution designs its own layout, so the form you receive may not look like the OECD template. The data it collects is the same.1Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. CRS Individual Self-Certification Form
Filling Out the Individual Form
The individual form has three parts. Have your TINs and current address ready before you start.
Part 1: Your Identification
Enter your full legal name (family name, first names, middle names), your current residential address, and a mailing address only if it differs from where you actually live. Add your date of birth. Some jurisdictions require your place of birth as well; if the form has fields for the town and country of birth, fill them in.1Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. CRS Individual Self-Certification Form
Part 2: Tax Residency and TIN
List every country where you are tax resident and the TIN issued by each. Jurisdictions that take the wider approach to CRS require a TIN for every country of residence, not only those that are reportable jurisdictions.1Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. CRS Individual Self-Certification Form If you are not sure of a TIN’s correct format, the OECD publishes country-by-country guides showing each jurisdiction’s TIN structure, based on information from the local tax administration.4Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Tax Identification Numbers
If you cannot provide a TIN for one of the listed countries, you have to select one of three reason codes:
- Reason A — the country does not issue TINs to its residents.
- Reason B — you cannot obtain a TIN despite reasonable effort. Selecting B requires you to write a short explanation in the box provided, and the bank can ask for a new self-certification once you have the number.
- Reason C — the country’s laws do not require you to furnish a TIN.1Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. CRS Individual Self-Certification Form
The reason codes are where most rejections come from. If your country does issue TINs and you simply have not applied for one, that is Reason B, not Reason A. Banks check the answer against the jurisdiction’s actual TIN rules and will bounce a form that picks the wrong code.
Part 3: Declaration and Signature
Sign and date the form. The declaration confirms the information is, to the best of your knowledge and belief, correct and complete. It also acknowledges that your account data may be shared with the tax authorities of the country where the account is held and any country where you are tax resident, and it commits you to notifying the institution if your circumstances change.1Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. CRS Individual Self-Certification Form
Filling Out the Entity Form
The entity form collects the same identification and residency information as the individual form, then adds a classification section. That classification decides how far the reporting goes and whether controlling persons need to file their own forms.
In Part 2, tick one box:2Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Entity Tax Residency Self-Certification Form
- Financial institution — investment entity, depository institution, custodial institution, or specified insurance company. If the entity holds a GIIN from FATCA registration, enter it here.
- Active NFE — an active non-financial entity. This covers publicly traded corporations and their related entities, government bodies, international organizations, non-profits, and any entity where less than 50 percent of gross income is passive and less than 50 percent of assets produce passive income.
- Passive NFE — anything that is not a financial institution and not an Active NFE. Ticking this box means every controlling person of the entity must complete a separate controlling person self-certification.
The Active NFE category also picks up start-ups that are investing capital to launch a non-financial business (for up to 24 months from inception), entities in liquidation or reorganization that were not financial institutions, and holding companies whose subsidiaries carry on active business rather than investing.5HSBC. How to Fill in the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) Entity Self-Certification A quick test if you are stuck: does the entity earn more than half its income from dividends, interest, rents, or similar passive sources? If yes, and it is not a regulated financial institution, it is almost certainly a Passive NFE.
When a Controlling Person Form Is Also Needed
If an entity is classified as a Passive NFE, or as an investment entity in a non-participating jurisdiction managed by another financial institution, the individuals who ultimately own or control it must each complete a controlling person self-certification.3Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Controlling Person Tax Residency Self-Certification Form The concept mirrors the beneficial-owner definition used in anti-money-laundering rules.
The form collects the same personal details as the individual version, plus a controlling person type code. For a company, the codes distinguish between control through ownership, control by other means, and the senior managing official. For a trust, each role has its own code: settlor, trustee, protector, beneficiary, or other. All of those roles count as controlling persons of a trust whether or not the person actively manages it.3Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Controlling Person Tax Residency Self-Certification Form
Working Out Your Tax Residency
The residency question is where careful filers get stuck, especially anyone with ties to more than one country. Tax residency is determined by each country’s domestic law, not by citizenship alone. Most countries treat you as tax resident if you keep a permanent home there or spend a substantial part of the year on their soil. A common threshold is 183 days of physical presence within a tax year, a figure that runs throughout the OECD Model Tax Convention and many bilateral treaties.6Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Model Tax Convention – Four Related Studies
Entities usually take their residency from the location of the registered office or the place where senior management makes key decisions. Where an entity qualifies as resident in two countries, the OECD Model Convention assigns residence to the jurisdiction of effective management.7Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. 2017 Update to the OECD Model Tax Convention
Individuals who meet the residency tests of two countries at once fall back on tie-breaker rules in the applicable treaty. The standard sequence is: the country where you have a permanent home; if you have one in both, the country where your personal and economic interests are closest (your centre of vital interests); if that is inconclusive, the country where you habitually live; and finally, your country of nationality.7Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. 2017 Update to the OECD Model Tax Convention The tie-breakers only apply where a treaty exists between the two countries. If no treaty covers your situation, you may genuinely be resident in both, and you should list both on your self-certification.
What Happens After You Submit
Your bank will tell you how to return the form: an online portal, an email attachment, or a signed hard copy. New account holders normally submit during onboarding, before the account is fully operational. Where the institution cannot collect the form on day one because of how a particular business line works, CRS rules allow up to 90 calendar days to obtain and validate it, though the institution still has to meet its reporting obligations for the period in which the account was opened.8Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. International Standards for Automatic Exchange of Information in Tax Matters
Once your form arrives, the institution cross-references what you have declared against what it already has on file. It is looking for indicia: markers that might suggest a different residency than the one you declared. These include a mailing or residence address in another jurisdiction, a phone number in another jurisdiction with no local number on file, and standing instructions to transfer funds to an account in another country.9Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Standard for Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information in Tax Matters If a contradiction turns up, the bank cannot simply accept the form. It has to obtain either a corrected certification or a reasonable explanation backed by documents such as a utility bill at the declared address, a passport, or an official residency certificate.2Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Entity Tax Residency Self-Certification Form
Keeping the Form Current
Submitting is not a one-time obligation. If your tax residency changes, you get a new TIN, or the details on your original form become inaccurate for any reason, you are expected to notify your bank and provide an updated self-certification.2Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Entity Tax Residency Self-Certification Form The exact reporting window is set by each institution; the OECD template leaves a blank for the bank to fill in.
Where a change of circumstances makes an existing certification invalid, the institution may treat your status as unchanged for up to 90 calendar days from the date it became invalid. If you do not provide a corrected form within that window, the bank has to treat you as resident in both the original jurisdiction and the jurisdiction suggested by the new information, and your data gets reported to both countries.10GOV.UK. Due Diligence – New Individual Accounts – Self Certifications – Change of Circumstances Dual reporting is awkward to unwind, so send the update promptly.
If You Refuse or Get It Wrong
CRS penalties are set by each participating jurisdiction; there is no single international fine schedule. In the United Kingdom, a person who fails to provide a valid self-certification faces a penalty of up to £300 where the failure is deliberate or results from not taking reasonable care.11GOV.UK. Penalties for Failure to Provide a Valid Self-Certification Australia imposes a penalty of one penalty unit on financial institutions for each failure to obtain a required self-certification, though it may remit the penalty if the failure was not the institution’s fault.12Australian Taxation Office. 6 Compliance
The practical consequences tend to bite harder than the fines. A bank that cannot obtain a valid self-certification may restrict account services, and persistent refusal can end the banking relationship. If you provide no form at all, the institution reports based on whatever foreign indicia it finds in your records, and your account information can end up with a tax authority you have no connection to.
A Note for US Persons
The United States is not a CRS participating jurisdiction. It operates its own reporting framework, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which requires foreign financial institutions to report accounts held by US persons directly to the IRS. CRS does not create an additional US filing obligation on top of FATCA. If you are a US citizen or resident opening an account at a foreign bank in a CRS country, the bank will still ask you to complete a CRS self-certification (to identify any foreign tax residency you may have), and it may separately collect a Form W-9 or W-8BEN for FATCA purposes.