The Department for International Tax Cooperation (“DITC”) is currently in the final stages of testing the Cayman AEOI Portal (“Portal”).

Notifications (i.e. registration) and reporting may be conducted by or on behalf of Financial Institutions (“FIs”) directly to the DITC via the Portal. It is anticipated that the portal will be opened in early March 2015, in accordance with IT systems delivery estimates. Once activated, this will be accessed from the dropdown box as shown below:

Under the Regulations, notifications are due by 31st March and reporting is due by 31st May of the relevant calendar year. Cabinet has approved extending the notification deadline to 30th April in order to facilitate industry compliance and an amendment to regulations will be completed in due course.

The reporting format will be consistent with currently published Schemas by the IRS for U.S. FATCA and by the OECD for the Common Reporting Standard, and will be in XML format. FIs will have the option of submitting reports to the DITC individually, by entering information manually on the website, or via bulk submission by uploading an XML file(s). FIs that have registered as a sponsoring entity will have the ability to upload an XML file containing information for multiple FIs.

Portal User Guidance Notes will be posted on the DITC website in due course.