Abstract
Countries around the world have been engaging in automatic exchange of information to tackle tax evasion. The same goal became the basis of the enactment of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) by the United States Congress. In order to establish a common approach to counter tax evasion among different countries, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released the Standard for Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information in Tax Matters which consists of the Competent Authority Agreement (CAA) and the Common Reporting Standard (CRS). Specifically, the automatic exchange of information is the exchange of financial account information between Tax Authorities in relevant countries. The law requires this information to be collected by financial institutions around the world for reporting to Tax Authorities. Automatic exchange of Information is made up of two information sharing frameworks: The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and The Common Reporting Standard (CRS). Under the automatic exchange of information, all financial institutions must identify accounts held by customers who are foreign tax residents or entities connected to foreign tax residents. Financial institutions must report these to the relevant Tax Authority who will then automatically exchange the account information with the relevant foreign Tax Authorities. Korean government has enacted domestic laws to require financial institutions to collect and report this information and has entered into international agreements to exchange the information with other governments. This paper analyzed the FATCA and CRS rules overall and proposed solutions for the legal and practical issues. This paper contributes to the existing literature on the automatic exchange of information by considering two information sharing frameworks.