How to enter your address in a CRS form

The CRS wants not only to know who owns an account, but also where the account holder can be found. Address is so important that it is a must field. Without it, a financial institution did not properly report. To locate an Account Holder we can enter several addresses indicating the type of address as:

residentialOrBusiness, residential, business, registeredOffice, or unspecified.

Imagine the world as a big and scary place, where it is not enough to list Street, BuildingIdentifier, SuiteIdentifier, FloorIdentifier, DistrictName, POB, PostCode, City and CountrySubentity but something like: after the third tree behind the third bush under the third rock.

This troglodyte could not be caught if we had to enter the address in the previously introduced  structured address field. Troglodytes have to pay taxes like everyone else and hence the OECD offers us a free address where the text flows as freely as the wind blows around our paradisical dwelling.

Whereas under the structured form field the field City was mandatory (nothing else), the free form field´s requirements are met under the CRS XML schema, if an entry was made with length zero. John Doe, residing at “”.

I for my part are saving my cash to acquire an abode at an address of type unspecified which does not fit into a structured address field and hence is reported in the free address field in a length of zero characters, if not for tax avoidance purposes but at least for the good weather.

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CRS Confusion: Correcting a deletion

August is the month of correction for us. We will deal with corrections and deletions of messages and records submitted under the common reporting standard. In a previous post we asked what happens when you delete a correction. Today we will venture into the dangerous swamps of correction of a deletion.

When you correct a message, the CRS schema asks you to inform the recipient WHAT you want to correct. This wisdom is encapsulated in the CRS schema tag “CorrDocRefID” which is meant to contain a reference to the DocRefID of the dataset to be corrected.

Example: You want to correct a previously deleted message. Which dataset are you going to reference in your CorrDocRefID: The first message or the message that deleted the first message. The right answer seems to be to reference the latest instance of a dataset in a chain of corrections. The second question is whether you can correct a deleted message at all.  The correct approach seems to be: let those damn (in)competent tax authorities (CA) deal with it, I do not care.

However, if the CA decided that a deletion deletes everything, a correction that points to a no longer existing dataset might be rejected playing the ball back into the FI court. Tax authorities are equally confused by the silence of the CRS User Guide. The only solution is to work together, i.e. exchange information IN A TIMELY MANNER what is being implemented, why and how.

So far my impression is that tax authorities and financial institutions are scheduled to exchange bank account information in the millions, however, they have not yet learnt how to pick up a phone.

Taciturn coding will benefit no one, but, who is listening ?

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