Disclosures under FATCA, CRS should be made in rupee: FinMin

Finance Ministry today said all disclosures under the FATCA and CRS should be made in rupees.
It further clarified that fixed deposits should not be treated as a separate account and must be linked to the pre- existing savings account for which KYC had already been undertaken.
"...All reporting has to be done in INR. For the reporting in 2017, Form 61B and Schema will be suitably modified to include a field for capturing type of currency," the CBDT said in a statement.
It further said the norms with regard to fixed deposits would also apply to "auto sweep" facility linked to the existing savings bank account.

Auto sweep refers to a facility that interlinks savings account with a fixed deposit account. It transfers extra amount lying in bank account, above a threshold limit, to FD.
The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) came into effect from September 30 which has enabled automatic exchange of financial information between India and the US.

The Common Reporting Standard (CRS), developed in response to the G20 request and approved by the OECD Council on 15 July 2014, calls on jurisdictions to obtain information from their financial institutions and automatically exchange that information with other jurisdictions on an annual basis.
The CBDT further said it had received queries regarding due diligence of Hindu Undivided Family (HUF) accounts on whether due diligence may be conducted either only on the Karta or on all.

"It has been decided that for the purpose of compliance, an HUF account shall be treated as an entity account. The due diligence of HUF accounts will be same as prescribed under PMLA/ KYC procedures," it added.
With regard to NBFC, it has clarified that NBFCs which accepts deposit in the course of a banking business or a similar business as mentioned in the definition of depository institution will be considered as Depository Institution and will report accordingly.