• The Common Reporting Standard (CRS) is an information standard for the automatic exchange of information between tax jurisdictions (AEOI) which was developed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). This is purely an information reporting tool for tax authorities from Financial Institutions and has no withholding tax obligation.
• The CRS came into effect on January 1, 2016.
• The CRS provides a common global approach for jurisdictions to obtain tax related financial information from financial institutions within their jurisdictions and provide the mechanism to automatically exchange that information with multiple jurisdictions on an annual basis. 
• The CRS is a big step towards a globally coordinated approach to the disclosure of income earned by individuals and organisations. As a measure to counter tax evasion, it builds upon other information sharing legislation, such as FATCA (the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) and the European Union (EU) Savings Directive.
• All entities are classified under the CRS rules, the classification are broadly in line with FATCA and those entities classified as financial institutions i.e. banks will have more work to do than those classified as non-financial institutions.
• Due to the classification of AXIS' entities under CRS as a publicly traded non-financial institution there is no annual reporting requirement nor is AXIS a "reportable entity" by other institutions as AXIS falls into the exemption by virtue of being an entity "regularly traded on one or more established securities markets".
• AXIS however has a responsibility to complete CRS Self Certification Forms when requested by third parties (i.e. investment banks etc.). We note that these self-certification forms will vary in format and timing from jurisdiction/institution to jurisdiction/institution as the forms for certification, unlike the FATCA forms, have not been standardized.

In order to ensure compliance, please contact the Tax department if you require assistance completing the self-certifications requested by third parties.