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As a Reporting Singaporean Financial Institution (“Reporting SGFI”), you are required to comply with the following obligations under the FATCA Regulations:
You may also refer to the IRAS FATCA FAQs (PDF, 484KB) for more information.
IRAS will work with and assist Reporting SGFIs that are voluntarily compliant to ensure their compliance with FATCA. On the other hand, IRAS will not hesitate to take deterrent measures such as issuing warnings and imposing penalties on errant Reporting SGFIs that choose to be non-compliant.
Minor and Administrative Errors
US Inland Revenue Service (“IRS”) will notify IRAS when they believe that the FATCA returns submitted by Reporting SGFI contain administrative errors or other minor errors which may have led to incorrect or incomplete information reporting or resulted in other infringements of FATCA Regulations. IRAS may exercise powers conferred by the Income Tax Act (“ITA”) to obtain corrected and/or complete information to resolve the errors.
Examples of minor errors could include:
Significant Non-Compliance
US Inland Revenue Service (“IRS”) will notify IRAS when they believe that a Reporting SGFI is in significant non-compliance with FATCA obligations. As above, IRAS may exercise powers conferred by the ITA to obtain corrected and/or complete information to resolve the errors if necessary.
Examples of significant non-compliance are:
If the enforcement actions do not resolve the non-compliance within a period of 18 months after notification provided by IRS, IRS shall treat the Reporting SGFI as a Non-participating Financial Institution (“NPFFI”) and the relevant consequences associated with that status will be applied (withholding 30% of any US source withholdable payments to NPFFI).
Penalties for Errors and Non-Compliance
Non-compliant Reporting SGFIs may also be liable to penalties under the Income Tax Act (“ITA”).
If found guilty under Section 105M(1) of the Income Tax Act:
If found guilty under Section 105M(1B) of the Income Tax Act:
If found guilty under Section 105M(3) of the Income Tax Act:
IRAS believes that majority of Reporting SGFIs are voluntarily compliant. IRAS understand that some Reporting SGFIs may occasionally make errors in their FATCA returns due to negligence or lack of understanding of their FATCA obligations.
IRAS encourage Reporting SGFIs who have made errors in their FATCA returns to come forward voluntarily as soon as they have uncovered the error to disclose these errors or omissions and get their FATCA obligations right.
For voluntary disclosure of error(s) relating to FATCA returns, you may provide information to IRAS.
If you are aware of any potential FATCA non-compliance, including the use of abusive schemes to circumvent reporting under the FATCA or intentional provision of false information to IRAS relating to FATCA, you may provide information to IRAS.
Your information could help make the system fairer for all of us. Your identity and all information / documents provided by you will be kept confidential.
IRAS will review the information that you have provided and will initiate investigation if our review indicates that an offence has likely been committed.
To assist us in our review, please provide the following:
What IRAS would do with your information
IRAS takes every report of non-compliance seriously and will make an independent evaluation of the case using the information provided as well as other information available to us. Where IRAS decide that an investigation is warranted, IRAS will follow up accordingly.
Please note that IRAS is bound by strict secrecy provisions. Thus, IRAS will not be able to update you on how IRAS deal with the information provided including; whether IRAS have decided to commence investigation and the status or outcome of the case in the event that IRAS have investigated the case.
IRAS will not handle frivolous reports, e.g. personal or internal disputes among business partners, commercial disputes between private parties.
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Last updated on 23 February 2022