If you're a Chinese tax resident with money in Singapore, Switzerland and the UAE, Beijing already has the balances, the interest earned, and your name as beneficial owner — CRS sent it there automatically last year. Here's exactly what your bank tells your government, jurisdiction by jurisdiction.

What CRS Actually Is

The Common Reporting Standard is the OECD's framework for automatic exchange of financial account information between tax authorities. Adopted starting in 2017, it now has more than 120 participating jurisdictions. The result: your financial accounts in any participating jurisdiction are reported annually to the tax authority of your declared tax residency, whether or not you tell them yourself.

Reporting flows in one direction and then out again: the financial institution reports to its own local tax authority, which automatically exchanges that data with the tax authorities of the account holders' declared residence. You don't see the exchange happen. It happens anyway.

The Notable Non-Participant: the United States

The United States is the single largest jurisdiction that hasn't adopted CRS. It runs its own framework, FATCA, instead. The practical consequence: US financial accounts held by non-US-resident foreign persons are not automatically reported to their home country, though FATCA still reports US persons' foreign accounts back to the IRS. That asymmetry has made the US an increasingly discussed destination for privacy-conscious non-US-resident individuals, particularly wealthy clients from China, the Middle East and parts of Europe. A handful of smaller jurisdictions remain partial or non-participants, though the list gets shorter most years.

What Your Bank Reports, and What It Doesn't

• Account balance at year-end
  Doesn't get reported (or reported less): Real estate held directly — though rental income paid into a bank account still is

• Gross income: dividends, interest, gross sale proceeds
  Doesn't get reported (or reported less): Physical assets — art, gold, cars, wine, watches — unless held via a reportable financial vehicle

• Controlling persons of entities, trusts and foundations
  Doesn't get reported (or reported less): Cryptocurrency, for now. CARF, the crypto equivalent, phases in during 2026–2027

• Names and tax residency of all account holders and beneficial owners
  Doesn't get reported (or reported less): Accounts in jurisdictions with limited CRS participation, and US accounts held by non-US persons, which FATCA governs instead

Which Governments Receive What

Every CRS-participating jurisdiction exchanges with every other one it has an agreement in place with. All EU member states exchange with each other. China receives reports from every CRS jurisdiction where a Chinese resident holds an account. So do India, Brazil, Russia, South Africa, Mexico and the rest of the participating world. A Chinese tax resident with accounts in Singapore, the UAE, the Cayman Islands, Switzerland and the UK has all five reported to Chinese tax authorities. A French tax resident with accounts in Cyprus, Malta, Ireland and Singapore has all four reported to France. There's no jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction opt-out once both sides participate.

What This Means, Situation by Situation

If you're a retiree moving abroad, your bank accounts everywhere are visible to your declared tax residence country. Claim tax residence in one country while holding accounts in another, and that country already knows about the second one.

If you're a digital nomad, you need a declared tax residence for banking purposes at all. Claiming to be resident nowhere doesn't produce privacy — it gets accounts rejected or closed, because banks need somewhere to report to.

If you're a business owner, corporate accounts are reportable too, beneficial ownership included, not just the accounts held in your own name.

If you're part of an HNW family, structural privacy from home-country tax authorities is largely gone under CRS, and planning has to assume visibility rather than hope for the absence of it. The one partial exception is US-situs structures for clients whose home country doesn't have a FATCA-equivalent reciprocal arrangement — Chinese HNW families are the clearest example, since the US remains one of the few destinations offering structural privacy from Chinese tax authorities specifically because it sits outside CRS. Achieving that privacy takes US-situs structures combined with a genuine change of tax residence away from China, not a nominee account.

What This Means Practically

Tax residence choice matters more than it used to, because your declared residence is what determines which government sees your accounts. Genuine residence change — actual physical presence and severed ties, not paper residence — is the primary tool available to change that picture. And compliance is the only strategy with a long shelf life: non-declaration is increasingly caught by CRS data-matching rather than by an audit finding it first.

Assume Visibility, Plan Accordingly

Book a scoping call. We'll map exactly what your current accounts already report to which government, before you assume anything is private.

General information, not a substitute for advice on your specific accounts and structures from a qualified cross-border tax adviser.