Markit To Establish First Industry-Wide Tax Form
Sharing Service
London and New York, NY - Markit, a financial
information services company, today announced it is coordinating an
industry-wide initiative, in partnership with Compliance Technologies
International ("CTI"), to help ease the administrative workload
associated with sharing U.S. tax forms.
As part of this
initiative, Markit and CTI propose to seek a Memorandum of Understanding
with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) which will enable financial
institutions to share U.S. withholding tax forms submitted
electronically by beneficial owners and intermediaries. All investors
need to provide these forms, known as W-8 and W-9 tax forms, when
investing in the U.S. to prove their withholding tax status.
The new service would be available via Markit Document Exchange, the
market standard service for financial institutions to exchange
compliance and regulatory documents. The tax validation tools provided
by CTI, including its electronic W-8 application, will be integrated
within Markit Document Exchange, allowing financial institutions to
submit, store, review and exchange electronic W-8 tax forms with
multiple counterparties using a single platform.
The initiative
is backed by the following financial institutions:
Bank of America
Merrill Lynch
Citi
Deutsche Bank
J.P. Morgan L
oomis
Sayles
PIMCO Royal Bank of Scotland
Penny Davenport,
Managing Director and Head of Markit Document Exchange at Markit, said:
"As cross-border tax issues remain at the forefront of governments'
priorities, we expect the administrative burden associated with
collecting and evaluating withholding tax forms to grow dramatically
over the next few years. We are delighted to help financial
institutions fulfill their tax requirements in a way that is efficient
from an operational point of view."
Dan Burt, Executive Director
and co-founder of CTI, said: "Integrating CTI's E-W8 application into
the Markit Document Exchange brings two industry standards under one
comprehensive offering for the financial services community. Given the
overlap of our clients and the complementary nature of our product
offerings, the synergies created by our relationship will be very
beneficial for the financial services industry."
Tracey Jordal,
SVP Compliance, PIMCO, said: "By allowing us and our clients to go
through a one time online process to complete the necessary W-8s and
W-9s and easily share them across all counterparties, Markit Document
Exchange will lift an enormous personnel and paper burden from us and
our clients who would typically need to fill out paper forms multiple
times over, each time an original tax form is needed or needs to be
renewed."
The new service will launch pending a receipt of a
Memorandum of Understanding from the IRS.
About Markit
Markit is a financial
information services company with more than 1,200 employees in Europe,
North America and Asia-Pacific. Over 1,500 financial institutions use Markit's
independent services to manage risk, improve operational efficiency and
meet regulatory requirements. For more information, visit
www.markit.com.
About CTI
CTI's software and services have
been used in multi-national corporations and seven of the ten largest
financial institutions in the world since 1998. CTI has a strong team of
highly specialized and experienced international and domestic tax and
software professionals, including lawyers, accountants, software
engineers and operations experts. CTI's team is a leader in cutting edge
global tax technology; consulting and outsourcing services specializing
in information return reporting and tax withholding. Years of practice
have contributed to CTI's long standing and solid relationships with
worldwide financial institutions, multi-national corporations, tax
authorities and governments. For more information, visit
www.cticompliance.com.
For More Information, Please Contact
Caroline Lumley
Vice President, Corporate Communications
Markit
Telephone: +44 20 7260 2047
Email: Caroline.Lumley@markit.com
Cyrus Daftary
Compliance Technologies
International
http://www.cticompliance.com
617-963-3412