In October 2014, 51 countries signed the new Common Reporting Standards agreement, which makes it possible for countries to exchange information regarding untaxed income. Skrill, one of the biggest e-wallets has stated that they will not be sharing such information with the governement, check out their official reply to our inquiry below!
"Our Head of Group Regulatory has recently commented on this matter, and I quote for your reference:
From the latest guidance notes, published by HMRC in September, we conclude that UK licensed e-money institutions, like Skrill Limited, will not be subject to the automatic exchange of information by OECD between countries under the Common Reporting Standards.
The CRS cover entities that fall into certain categories of institutions, which include custodial institutions, depository institutions, investment entities and specified insurance companies. There was some uncertainty as to whether or not E-money institutions might be regarded as depository institutions. The latest guidance notes however specifically state that “E-money” providers that are governed by the provisions of the European Union Electronic Money Directive (2009/110/EC) (EMD) are not deposit takers for the purposes of the Banking Consolidation Directive (2006/48/EC). Accordingly such providers will not fall within the definition of depository institution and therefore also not in the scope of the CRS".
If you want to dig deeper into the HMRC guidance notes, you can do so here!
