Recently the Cyprus tax department issued a guidance which is related to the exchange of information with Austria under Directive 2014/107/EU on mandatory automatic exchange of information along with Common Reporting Standard (“CRS”) based reporting as from 1 January 2016 throughout the EU. At the time that the directive was adopted, Austria was granted a derogation allowing it to apply the directive one year later than other member states.
While Austria benefits from the derogation under Article 2 of Council Directive 2014/107/EU, no reciprocal derogation has been granted to any other Member State with regard to the information to be transmitted to Austria. Therefore, with effect from 1 January 2016 Cyprus is obliged to provide information on payments falling within the scope of Directive 2014/107/EU made to residents of Austria, in the same way as payments made to residents of other member states.
The information so collected with reference to tax year 2016 should be transmitted to Austria by September 2017, in accordance with Article 8(6) of Council Directive 2011/16/EU as lastly modified by Council Directive (EU) 2015/2376.
