The Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information Act, 2016 (“Act”) came into force in The Bahamas on 1st January, 2017. The Act facilitates the implementation and enforcement in The Bahamas of the Common Reporting Standard (“CRS”) as developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (“OECD”). The CRS marks a global shift toward automatic exchange of tax information between jurisdictions as opposed to the exchange of information based on a request made by one jurisdiction to another.
