Evasion of FATCA and CRS reporting (p. 540)
Perhaps the greatest commonality between CRS and FATCA is the ease with which both regimes may be avoided. CRS and FATCA both require disclosure of accounts and the information regarding the persons who own the accounts. Investments in land, businesses, collectables, jewelry, and apparel all escape reporting under both regimes. Further, disclosure under both regimes may be avoided with the cooperation of others. In the case of CRS, reporting is easily avoided by holding accounts in the name of an individual who is a resident of Canada. In the case of FATCA, reporting is easily avoided by holding accounts in the name of someone who is not a U.S. person (citizen or resident of the United States). With such easy opportunities for avoidance, both regimes represent a greater threat to the unwary than to the truly calculating.
Concerns re information reported to country authority (p. 540)
...FATCA reporting is largely a tax problem for U.S. persons. In contrast, the concerns raised by CRS reporting are broader. While CRS is an exchange of information between tax authorities, it is this author's experience in assisting clients to establish trusts in the United States so as to avoid CRS reporting that the motivation of these individuals is the privacy and protection of their families who are resident in the home countries to which CRS reporting will be provided. For countries whose controls on disclosure of financial information are easily subverted, CRS reporting is particularly problematic. Disclosures regarding the foreign assets of these individuals invite extortion, and in some cases kidnapping. Where these concerns are not present, often political risk is.
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