CRS reporting compared: ES, FR, IT, NL, DE and LU for EMIs

CRS reporting is one standard and six different filings for a payment or e-money institution active in Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and Luxembourg. The account rules come from the same EU text, and since DAC8 they reach e-money balances from 1 January 2026. The deadlines, channels, nil-return rules, schemas and fines are all national. They run from 31 May in Madrid to 1 August in the Netherlands, and only some states require a return when there is nothing to report. This hub sets the six regimes side by side and links to the country guide for each.

1. The common baseline: DAC2, then DAC8

Inside the EU, CRS is not an optional treaty layer. Council Directive 2014/107/EU (DAC2) wrote the due diligence and reporting rules into Annex I of Directive 2011/16/EU. Each member state collects the data from its own reporting financial institutions and exchanges it with the others. Council Directive (EU) 2023/2226 (DAC8) then amended that annex to take in the OECD’s revised CRS. Member states had to adopt the changes by 31 December 2025 and apply them from 1 January 2026.

The account definitions and reportable data are harmonised. The calendar, portal, schema version, nil rule and fines are not.

2. What DAC8 changed for e-money

For a payments business, the 2026 change is the reason this comparison matters. Directive (EU) 2023/2226 amends the CRS definitions in four ways that reach e-money institutions directly:

• Depository Institution now covers any entity that holds Electronic Money or Central Bank Digital Currencies for customers, not only one that accepts deposits in a banking or similar business.
• Electronic Money has its own definition: a digital representation of a single fiat currency, issued on receipt of funds to make payment transactions, a claim on the issuer, accepted by third parties, and redeemable at par. A product created only to move funds on a customer’s instructions is excluded. It loses that exclusion if the funds are ordinarily held for more than 60 days.
• Depository Account now includes an account or notional account that represents all the e-money held for a customer.
• A new excluded account removes that e-money account from reporting if its rolling 90-day average end-of-day balance never exceeded USD 10,000 on any day of the reporting period.

The directive also adds data points: whether a valid self-certification was obtained, each controlling person’s role, the account type, pre-existing or new, and joint holders. Those fields drive the new XML schemas for 2027 filings. The USD 10,000 test excludes accounts, not institutions: an EMI whose wallets all stay small is still a reporting financial institution.

3. The six regimes side by side

Facts are as published by each authority at the time of writing. The country guides linked in the first column carry the detail and the sources.

4. The calendar: six dates in ten weeks

The reference period is the same everywhere: the previous calendar year. The filing deadlines fall in this order:

1. Spain, 31 May. Orden HAP/1695/2016 sets a window from 1 January to 31 May. When 31 May falls on a weekend the Agencia Tributaria publishes a later closing day. The 2026 campaign ran to 1 June.
2. Italy and Luxembourg, 30 June. The Agenzia delle Entrate’s FAQ gives 30 June of the following year for new data. The ACD gives 30 June after the end of the calendar year, and its first return under the new e-money rules is due by 30 June 2027.
3. France, 15 July. The cahier des charges v3.7 says a decree sets 15 July, and decrees of 17 February 2025 brought the date forward from 31 July. Older BOFiP pages still show 31 July. They are out of date.
4. Germany, 31 July. The BZSt says the FKAustG allows no extension and that the deadline is met only when the data has fully arrived. An attempt to transmit is not enough.
5. Netherlands, 1 August. The Belastingdienst requires the previous year’s FATCA/CRS data to have arrived by 1 August.

A group calendar built on the latest date misses Spain by two months. Set the internal data freeze against 31 May and plan the other filings from there.

5. Nil returns: three different answers

The nil-return question splits the six states into three groups. This is the obligation most often missed by an EMI that has just come into scope with a book of small wallets.

• Required: Spain, Italy, Luxembourg. Spain has required an annual negative declaration since 1 January 2022, filed as a submission without reportable accounts. Italy’s instructions require a CRS703 notice when there is nothing to report. Luxembourg’s law has required a zero-value message since 1 January 2021, and MyGuichet accepts it through a guided form, not as XML.
• A yearly act in the portal: the Netherlands. A registered institution with no data says so through the FATCA/CRS portal. The Belastingdienst invites it again the next year. Removing an institution from the population for good is a separate request.
• Not required: Germany and France. The BZSt says no nil report is currently needed. The DGFiP recommends declaring an état néant on the Tiers Déclarants portal but does not require it.

In Luxembourg, filing neither data nor a zero-value message by the deadline brings a flat EUR 10,000 fine.

6. Channels and the access you need before filing

No channel can be opened in the week of the deadline. Each needs an enrolment step first:

• Spain: a recognised client certificate for the web service.
• France: the professional space and Tiers déclarants service. In 2026 it opened on 23 April, closed on 16 July and reopened on 28 September for corrections.
• Italy: Entratel or Fisconline, then SID registration and its signing certificate.
• Netherlands: portal registration, which issues a meldingscode you need again for nil notices.
• Germany: a BZSt online.portal account; DIP for mass data needs one-time activation.
• Luxembourg: a contract with an ACD-recognised transmitter, a tax number and an RFI identifier.

7. Transposition and schema status for the 2026 reporting year

Each state used its own instrument to apply the changes from 1 January 2026:

• Germany: the Act of 22 December 2025 implementing Directive (EU) 2023/2226 (BGBl. 2025 I No. 352). Article 3 amends the FKAustG, and § 19 No. 5 now names institutions that hold e-money for customers.
• Italy: a ministerial decree of 30 December 2025 implementing Legge 95/2015 and Directive (EU) 2023/2226, published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale of 31 December 2025.
• France: Décret 2025-1277 of 19 December 2025, amending Décret 2016-1683, under Article 1649 AC CGI.
• Luxembourg: the Law of 27 March 2026. The ACD’s FAQ says it brings e-money and payment institutions into scope from 1 January 2026.
• Netherlands: bill 36.782, adopted by the Eerste Kamer on 31 March 2026 with effect from 1 January 2026. The Belastingdienst says specified e-money products are now reportable under DAC2/CRS.
• Spain: the Ministry of Finance published a draft royal decree in July 2025 to amend Real Decreto 1021/2015, including the e-money rules. Check the BOE for the final text before relying on its detail.

On format, France, Germany and Luxembourg have announced a version 3 schema for filings from 1 January 2027. Luxembourg opened pre-validation for it on 12 October 2026. Italy’s current technical documents are still on CrsXML v2.0. Plan for a new specification before the 2027 campaign in every state that has not yet published one.

8. Branches: which authority gets which file

Under Section VIII of Annex I to Directive 2011/16/EU, a member state’s financial institution excludes its branches located outside that state. The reporting follows the establishment that maintains the account, not the licence. A Luxembourg EMI reports to the ACD the accounts kept at head office, including customers served cross-border under the freedom to provide services. A branch in Italy or Germany is treated as a domestic reporting institution there and files the accounts it maintains with the Agenzia delle Entrate or the BZSt.

Residence then decides reportability. A Spanish branch reports its French-resident customers, not those resident only in Spain. Each filing covers a different slice of one customer base, and the split must be reconciled so no account is filed twice or missed.

9. Worked examples

A. A Luxembourg EMI with branches in Spain and Italy.

Facts: the EMI serves customers in all six states. Spanish and Italian customers sit on the books of local branches. Everyone else is served from head office under the freedom to provide services.

What the rule says: each branch is a reporting institution where it is located, and head office excludes its foreign branches. Residence decides which accounts are reportable.

What the practitioner does: files three returns. The Spanish branch files Modelo 289 by 31 May. The Italian branch files through SID by 30 June. Head office files with the ACD by 30 June, covering French, Dutch, German and other non-Luxembourg residents served from Luxembourg. Germany and France get no file from this group, because it has no establishment there.

Outcome: three filings from one population, each limited to the accounts its establishment maintains.

B. A German branch with only small wallets.

Facts: a Dutch EMI’s German branch finds that no customer’s rolling 90-day e-money balance went above USD 10,000 in 2026.

What the rule says: every account is excluded. The BZSt does not currently require a nil report. The Dutch head office, by contrast, must give its annual no-data notice in the Belastingdienst portal if it too has nothing to report.

What the practitioner does: keeps the daily rolling-average calculation as evidence for the German branch and files nothing in Germany. Files the Dutch notice before 1 August.

Outcome: two “nothing to report” positions, handled differently because the law differs.

C. First year for a Spanish branch that thinks it is out of scope.

Facts: a branch concludes in May 2027 that it has no reportable accounts for 2026 and files nothing.

What the rule says: Spain has required an annual negative declaration since 2022.

What the practitioner does: files the negative declaration in the 1 January to 31 May window and keeps the scoping memo with it.

Outcome: the branch is on record as compliant, rather than indistinguishable from one that never filed.

10. FAQ

11. What to do, today

• Head of reporting: put all six dates in one calendar and freeze group data against Spain’s 31 May.
• COO: map every establishment to its authority and channel, and confirm certificates, enrolments, the Dutch meldingscode and the Luxembourg transmitter contract before the spring.
• Tax and compliance: write a 2026 scoping memo per establishment under the e-money definitions. Diary the nil filings in Spain, Italy and Luxembourg and the Dutch no-data notice.
• Data team: run the daily rolling 90-day USD 10,000 test per customer across all wallets, and capture the new DAC8 data points.
• Engineering: test the version 3 schemas where they are published, starting with Luxembourg’s pre-validation platform, and watch Spain and Italy for new specifications.

Related: CRS for EMIs: when you are a Financial Institution · Building the CRS return · DAC8 explained · CRS reporting in Ireland (Revenue, ROS)