FATCA Responsible Officer Certifications are due

The IRS has now launched an additional module on the existing FATCA Certification Portal FFI home page allowing Responsible Officers to submit FATCA certifications online.

Following the publication of the draft  Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act ("FATCA")  Certifications earlier this year on the  IRS website , the IRS has now launched an additional module on the existing  FATCA Certification Portal  FFI home page allowing the Responsible Officers to submit certifications online.

Under the FATCA regulations and in accordance with the FFI Agreement, the Responsible Officer (RO) is required to make one-time Certification of pre-existing Accounts (COPA) and a periodic certification every three years for each financial institution registered on the IRS FATCA Portal. The RO, for example, shall certify that it has complied with all due diligence and reporting obligations under FATCA and that it has an effective FATCA Compliance Program in place. The exhaustive list of requirements can be found on the  Draft FATCA Certification  website.

FATCA Status

As the system automatically suggests the type of the certification due and the entity has to confirm its FATCA Status prior to proceeding with the certification, it is strongly advisable to review  FATCA classification for each entity, also those without certification requirements, in order to subsequently avoid irrelevant IRS notices and incorrect RO Certifications.  

Deadline & User Guide

According to the updated version of the   FATCA Online Registration User Guide  dated July 2018 the first deadline for submitting COPA and Periodic Certification has been extended to December 2018.

FAQs

The IRS have also updated their standard  FATCA FAQs  General website and added a new section “FATCA Certifications” where they have further specified the first submission deadline under Q13 of the FATCA Certification section: “For the certification period ending December 31, 2017, FATCA certifications are generally due no later than December 15, 2018”.

Terminated Entities

The certifications seem to have to be submitted also for terminated Foreign Financial Institutions (FFIs) and certain Nonfinancial Foreign Entities (NFFEs). It is explicitly stated in the IRS User Guide that the registration account is not disabled when FFI cancels agreement to allow for submission of certifications.

For more information contact our   FATCA experts  or take a look at our  FATCA reporting services .