New difficulties when opening bank accounts for yacht crew.

Yacht crew have always had certain 'complications' when trying to open bank accounts offshore for their time spent on the boat.

With the introduction of the Common Reporting Standard from 1st January 2016, things might be about to get that little bit harder.

This is an extract email from a bank (with whom we work) regarding their new procedures when opening bank accounts for yacht crew.  If you are a yacht crew member or about to embark on being yacht crew then you may need to consider the following information when managing your financial arrangements.

Extract reads as follows:

"I am sure most of you are aware that new tax reporting rules have come in to force from 1^st January 2016.

The Common Reporting Standard, CRS, is the global standard for the automatic exchange of financial account information and aims to prevent cross-border tax evasion. It has been designed to provide maximum international consistency and largely absorbs most other governmental cross border reporting schemes.

This involves 94 countries and they include the usual countries of nationalities that we normally see for crew, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa etc. 

As a Bank we are still undecided regarding the Seafarers but as from now can you please obtain the clients tax identification number (TIN).

In future this will be required for all bank opening account procedures. 

We will have to take it on a case by case basis for those crew that genuinely do not have a TIN number.

More information will be provided once we have decided how we approach the CRS requirement for yacht crew but I am pretty certain we will not be allowing  anyone to claim ‘not resident anywhere for tax’ without it being queried and we will probably not have this option in the new application form. 

With this in mind it may be more important to take tax and financial advice to help you plan for your time onboard.  If your affairs are relatively simple, in terms of opening a bank account, then you can contact our Horizons Yacht Crew specialist team here:  http://www.my-horizons.com/

If your affairs are more complicated and you wish to speak with me regarding your tax affairs, possible investments and retirement plans then you can contact me on gareth.horsfall@spectrum-ifa.com or call me on +39 3336492356