New Cayman Islands Fund Annual Return form, CRS compliance form, CRS and FATCA reporting deadline extensions

Fund Annual Return form

The Fund Annual Return form (known as the FAR form) that must be submitted annually to the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA) by all regulated Cayman Islands investment funds has been amended. The amendments increase the amount of information that must be provided to CIMA in the FAR form. The purpose of collecting the additional information is to enable CIMA to improve their regulatory oversight of the financial services sector.

For investment funds that have a financial year end which ended up to 31 March 2020, the old FAR form can be filed with CIMA in 2020. For all other regulated investment funds the new FAR form must be completed and submitted in 2020.

CRS Compliance form

The Cayman Islands Department of International Tax Cooperation (DITC) released the new CRS Compliance form.

Although the next deadline for submission of this form is 31 December 2020, the DITC published it to provide as much advance notice as possible as there are new requirements contained in the form. As a result of industry consultation, the form, which the DITC have been developing for some time, has been improved and simplified to assist users. A detailed user guide will be published in due course. In the interim the purpose of the form and a high-level overview of the requirements are set out in the Notes for Users on the DITC website and the Notes on the CRS Compliance form.

CRS reporting deadline extension

Due to applicable international deadlines being extended, the DITC has extended the CRS reporting deadline to 16 November 2020, to bring it into line with the FATCA extension.

FATCA reporting deadline extension

As a result of the extension granted by the US to Model 1 IGA jurisdictions such as the Cayman Islands, the DITC has extended the FATCA reporting deadline for the 2019 reporting period to 16 November 2020.

If you have any questions, please contact your usual Harneys contact.