Frequently asked questions – Taiwan – Retail Banking and Wealth Management

The Common Reporting Standard (“CRS”) is a new information-gathering and reporting requirement to help fight against tax evasion and protect the integrity of tax systems. To align with this global requirement, Ministry of Finance (“MOF”) issued the ‘Regulations Governing the Implementation of the Common Standard on Reporting and Due Diligence for Financial Institutions’ and the relevant local rules (collectively, the “Regulations”) which will be implemented from 01 January 2019 for all financial institutions.

The CRS seeks to establish the tax residency of customers. According to the Regulations, financial institutions are required to perform due diligence for Financial Account information and identify customers who appear to be tax resident in other country/jurisdiction, and report certain information to our local tax authority. They may then share that information with the tax authority of the country/jurisdiction (or countries/jurisdictions) where you are tax resident.

According to the Regulations, tax authorities require financial institutions such as HSBC to collect and report certain information relating to their customers’ tax statuses.

If you open a new bank account, invest in new financial products or change your circumstances in some way, we will ask you to certify a number of details about yourself. This process is called ‘self-certification’ and we are required to collect this information under the Regulations.

All local financial institutions – that includes banks, insurers and asset management businesses (excepted for those exempted) – are required to be compliant with the Regulations.

In line with the Regulations, we will ask you for your:

• Name
• Address
• Place of birth (for Individual and Controlling Persons)
• Date of birth (for Individual and Controlling Persons)
• Country(ies)/jurisdiction(s) of tax residence
• Taxpayer identification number(s)
• Place of registration/incorporation (for Entities)
• Entity Type (for Entities)
• Controlling Person Type for certain Entity Types (for Controlling Persons)

This will depend on where you live and your circumstances. Please contact a professional tax adviser or check the OECD CRS Portal for more information on how to determine your tax residency, as we are unable to provide tax advice.

Even if you have already provided information under the United States government’s Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (“FATCA”), you may still need to provide additional information for the CRS as these are different regulations with different requirements.

FATCA is US Law and requires financial institutions to identify US Persons and report in line with FATCA regulations, based on citizenship. The CRS requires financial institutions to identify the tax residency of all customers and in most cases report information on customers who are tax resident outside of the country/jurisdiction where they hold their accounts.

Under the Regulations, we are legally required to establish the tax residency status of all our customers, even if you are a local tax resident. However, typically your details will not be reportable to the tax authorities for CRS purposes.

Once we have a valid self-certification on file, you will only be asked to complete another when you update certain information on your account or we believe your reportable status may have changed.

HSBC is required to report your tax details under the legal obligations introduced in the Regulations.

Yes. We will only disclose your information to the relevant tax authorities if we are legally required to do so.

Customer information is protected by a strict code of secrecy and security which all members of the HSBC Group, their staff and third parties are subject to.

We are required by law to verify the details you have provided as part of your self-certification. We might ask you for a copy of your passport to verify your identity or for some other evidence of your tax residency declared in your self-certification.

The information provided in the self-certification form, and details about the accounts and products you have with us, including:

• the balance or value
• the total amounts of interest or payments credited.

For a list of countries/jurisdictions participating in the CRS with MOF, alongside the dates that they will start exchanging information, please see the MOF website.

For further information on your tax residency, please refer to the rules governing tax residence that have been published by each country/jurisdiction. You can also find out more information on the OECD CRS portal or visit MOF website.