Joint OECD statement on the implementation of CARF by 2027

24/11/23

On Friday 10 November 2023 a joint statement was published on the UK HM Treasury website announcing that 48 jurisdictions seek to timely transpose the Crypto Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) into domestic law and to initiate first exchange of information by 2027. The OECD CARF concerns international standards on the exchange of information for crypto assets.

What does this mean for your organisation?

The list of jurisdictions committed to implement CARF under the joint statement includes the following: Armenia, Australia, Austria, Barbados, Belgium, Belize, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America; the Crown Dependencies of Guernsey, Jersey, and Isle of Man; and the United Kingdom’s Overseas Territories of the Cayman Islands and Gibraltar.

Although the United States are not part of the CRS signatories the United States are listed as one of the participating countries under the joint statement.

Next to the announcement to implement CARF into domestic law, committed countries that have joined the Common Reporting Standard (‘CRS’) will also implement the amendments to CRS which was published as part of a larger package earlier this year. See our website for the proposed CARF legislation and the amendments to CRS.

PwC Observation

Based on the CARF Framework published earlier this year, only the EU has acted upon this with the approval of the EU equivalent of CARF (EU DAC8) on 17 October 2023. Other than the EU Member States no jurisdiction committed to the implementation of CARF with first reporting due in 2027 (as intended in CARF), neither on the amendments to CRS.

With the commitment of other large jurisdictions, like the United States, United Kingdom and Switzerland, CARF will further create a level playing field between the Crypto Asset Providers across the globe.

Although the United States have recently introduced additional reporting around Digitals assets, they are not a signatory to the CRS, it has to be seen how they will incorporate CARF since both reporting frameworks work together and include several carve-outs to avoid duplicate reporting under CARF and CRS.