Tax Residency Self Certification

melbury

Has anyone else received a letter from their bank asking them to complete a form to confirm where they are resident for tax purposes?

I had a 7 page letter from Lloyds this morning, which was totally unexpected:(

Ifts

Yes I received a similar letter from HSBC and a few other financial institutions that I filled in and returned to them - its to do with the Common Reporting Standard.

For more info there is another Lloyds customer on here with a similar question to yours:

'Confirm where you are resident for tax purposes' letter has come through the post...

bowlhead99

I had a couple of letters from Lloyds on this within the last year (from Lloyds in UK, and from Lloyds channel islands where I also have accounts - same document, different cover letter). They have millions of customers so it will take a while to get through all of them by the end of this year.

With the new regulations, banks don't *have* to write to all their pre-existing account holders, but many will take the view that it's more efficient to take that approach and have all their customers self certify (even though the vast majority of their customers will simply be UK resident without indicia of foreign residence) rather than spend ages poring over existing customer documentation to draw their own conclusions and still have to then write to a proportion of the customers anyway.

If you don't bother replying to confirm your tax residency and tax ID, the worst that can happen is that (a) they keep chasing you to do it every year and (b) the meantime they assess you as being resident in some other country due to some spurious indication of foreign status within their systems, and end up reporting your balance and interest income to those foreign tax authorities via HMRC on an annual basis.

While you might be happy to put up with (a), it's perhaps better to take the opportunity to help them "cure" any risk of (b).

johnjamieson1955

Hi - I've just heard from the firm that acts as trustees for a trust fund I have. They say I must complete a

Taxation Reporting Information Self- Certification Form

and return it to them - plus £180 plus vat for the privilege. Has this happened to anyone else? Do the banks carryout this service free of charge. I asked my bank - Yorkshire bank and denied all knowledge of this matter!