is IBAN in fact a bank acc no. or reference no. of e-Wallet

In my country of residence we have to report foreign bank accounts to tax authority. Emphasis on BANK.
Since Revolut is e-wallet account, I would normally not need to inform tax authority, but considering Revolut provided me with my “personal” IBAN, the account “behaves” and functions as a regular bank account. Considering this I have a couple of questions;

  1. is Revolut still e-wallet account and when will it transform into being a classic bank account ? (legal definition of classic bank)

  2. are personal IBAN numbers actual “personal” numbers of accounts as with brick and mortar banks, or are this some kind of sophisticated reference numbers that appear as IBAN numbers (I read this explanation in the past somewhere) ?

  3. Is it possible to opt-out of IBAN account number in order to retain full e-wallet definition of an account ?

  4. Does Revolut share account information with tax and EU authorities the same way as a classic bank would (EU automatic exchange) ? What information is shared ? is this information shared even if account does not have IBAN number activated ?

Would you mind sharing your country of residence?

They’re an e-money institution licensed in the UK

Your money is stored in either Lloyd’s or Barclays in your name, so if Revolut goes bust, you could recover your money from here

No

Any information legally required to be shared by a UK e-money institution will be shared with any and al lbodies required to receive this information

it is Slovenia
still not sure if IBAN is the actual account number or some kind of sophisticated reference.
For example a Transferwise account also has IBAN number that is personal, but they have a disclaimer saying that
“although your bank details are unique, they don’t represent real bank accounts, but simply “addresses” for your electronic money account. You can still use them to receive payments though, like a real bank account”

Is Revolut IBAN the same thing. This is important as it makes a big difference if, in my example Slovenian account holders, are obligated to report the account or not.

I believe it’s not a real account number on a bank but the number linked to the electronic money account.

According to this regulation, the money must be in a fenced account on a bank to safe us costumers from financial loss in case something goes wrong with Revolut. But it’s not an individual account on each of us but a shared account.

Regarding tax regulation, it depends on your country. If you only have to pay taxes on any income and not on assets, then your Revolut account is not of interest as you don’t have any interest paid to you by definition (equal no income from the funds on your Revolut account). If you have to pay taxes on assets, I would assume that any asset above a certain limit will need to be declared.

In Switzerland, we have both types of taxes on income and on assets. But for cash, you don’t have the declare your cash you have on you/at home within your normal usage pattern. Meaning, if you hold CHF 5000 in cash and this is your usual/average spending within a few days, you don’t have to declare it. If this is twice your monthly salary and your average weekly spending is CHF 200, you should.

We do not have this kind of asset based taxation, but we do have an unreasonable tax code that requires us to declare foreign bank accounts regardless of having money or taxable income or interests incurring. But because this tax code only requires us to declare regular bank account (aka checking account) we are exempt from reporting e-money accounts, savings accounts or trading accounts. According to you, Revolut is definitely not a checking account although it has all the features of it and therefore is difficult to explain to tax authority that Revolut is in fact not a bank.
Do you think Revolut issues some kind of document/certificate that specifies that it is not in fact a bank and iban is not in fact personal account but merely a reference to a pool of money…
Some documentation would definitely help clear things up with tax authority and have them distinguish e-money accounts from regular checking accounts.

Revolut accounts are client ringfenced accounts that are in your name at either Barclays or Lloyd’s.

I see. So now the question is what exactly Revolut shares with foreign tax authorities. I realise that in criminal situations they are able to get the information on everything, but I am mostly interested in the EU automatic data sharing. Regular banks will normally share tax-id, account number (iban) and the balance with the country of residence of particular person.
Does the same thing happen with revolut accounts and this info gets shared automatically, or not, since Revolut is in fact e-wallet ?

If I combine the answer from @Recchan and the question from @Mike it comes down to the question: does the underlining bank, where “our” accounts in our names are run, report them to the tax authorities? I would assume so, as a bank is obliged to do it. Right?

Do these banks use our Revolut GB IBAN as identifier as well for this purpose?

And how does that combine with the whole picture? To avoid double reporting it somehow would imply that an underling bank would not report ring fenced accounts under the electronic money act?

@anon33247966 can you give us a statement what really happens?

thanks. I hope @anon33247966 can tell us what exactly happens.

Hi, Can anyone answer my Question? Accidentally I have lost a paper with my Revolut IBAN number, BIC und Account holder name. Now I am afraid that someone could find it. so the Question is - can anyone with this IBAN, BIC und Family make me trouble? Or the IBAN number is only for receiving transfers , and not for paying? If anyone with this Data calls Support , can he makes changes in account or not? Thanks

I wouldn’t worry too much If I were you. The worst thing it can happen is that someone wires you some money. This would be unlikely I believe…

To be more precise, the accounts are in Revolut‘s name. But the funds are held there in a customer’s name, similar to how escrow accounts work.

Revolut provides e-money accounts for their customers, and the personal IBANs are a feature of those e-money accounts. Availability of IBANs does not indicate that „real“ bank accounts are provided. (I am ignoring Lithuania here to keep it simple).

@Mike check Revolut’s T&Cs. It’s explained there that they’re indeed providing e-money accounts. Since it‘s the legally binding contract between them and you, the T&Cs should be sufficient to clarify this for your tax advisor.

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