Markit is launching Markit │CTI Tax Solutions for the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) which identifies tax residency and performs due diligence on customer accounts. Barclays, Brown Brothers Harriman and other major industry participants supported the design and testing of the solution and have signed on for the service in order to meet their CRS requirements.

The solution enables institutions to conduct due diligence through validating account data across existing books and records, self certification forms or existing account know your customer (KYC) data. The solution also has built in logic to extract the necessary information required to meet jurisdictional standards.

From January 1 2016, CRS requires financial institutions in 56 jurisdictions to have stronger processes around automated solutions for due diligence, monitoring, customer data, tax reporting and responding to authorities’ requests for information to increase transparency between countries on foreign assets and investments.

“As a firm we pride ourselves on our relationships with our customers as well as our strong pedigree and expertise in delivering tax solutions,” said Cyrus Daftary, managing director and chief executive officer at Markit │CTI Tax Solutions. “We have participated in the OECD’s CRS working group and have worked with our key design partners to create a scalable solution to solve for the approaching CRS deadlines. To date, many organisations have spent a considerable amount of time to get to grips with the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act which now appears is much smaller in scale. Our experience coupled with our FATCA and Qualified Intermediary offerings will help organisations overcome the next major compliance hurdle related to CRS”.    

Tax Solutions for CRS is available across all of the 56 early adopter countries and will be available in seven different languages in Q2 2016.