Wednesday, August 15, 2001 -- Tax Information Group for ECommerce Requirements Standardization (TIGERS)

Terry Garber opened the meeting with the tentative agenda and welcoming everyone.

The planned agenda:

Wednesday 8/15/2001 (2:00pm to 5:00pm)

- Welcome and Introductions

- TIGERS Background & Update

- IRS & XML Presentation/Discussion

- Base Schema Structure

Thursday 8/16/2001 (9:00am to 5:00pm)

- Base Schema Structure (cont.)

- Illinois Withholding Coupon Schema

- IRS 1120 Discussion

- Motor Fuel Schema Discussion

- IRS 941 Discussion

Friday 8/17/2001 (9:00am to 12:00pm)

- Base Schema Wrap-up

- Sourcing of Wireless Transactions

- Miami, FL agenda (Oct. 1-4)

Terry Garber gave a background on ASC X12 (TIGERS).

Greg Carson with the IRS gave a project update on 1120 and 941 Schemas. The 1120 Filing is to launch in 2003. The IRS reports it will use the Direct Approach for XML at this time and have built 80% of the 1120 and 941 Schemas. They plan to publish the schemas on the IRS website in October. They are soliciting input for the internal architecture. IRS will continue to work with TIGERS, and wants to get more front-end validation from software developers.

Terry Garber suggested building an open approach instead of a proprietary one.

Marc Midkiff asked if the IRS had looked at the TIGERS batch envelope.

Larry Hanson asked if they had a core components standard. Glenda Hayes answered that there are potential optional core components in the schema.

There was discussion of the TIGERS 813 Base Schema. Michael Roytman led this discussion. He revised the schema using ebXML naming conventions of object class, property term, and representation type. He explained that Lower Camel Case refers to all words in lower case if start word is in lower case, and that Upper Camel Case refers to the start words being in upper case. He suggested that Upper Case is used for elements and Lower Case is used for attributes. When an attribute is complex, the word 'type' needs to be appended.

There was further discussion that the Core Components for UNCEFACT and ebXML are now under Joint Core Components. Explicit naming conventions are being used for now, but will be shortened later.

Part of the transmitter info in SOAP is getting split off. The transmitter information needs to be in kept in order to tie a single payment to a batch filing.

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Thursday, August 16, 2001 -- Tax Information Group for ECommerce Requirements Standardization (TIGERS)

Discussion was continued on the 813 TIGERS Base Schema. Michael Roytman presented an XML text instance document for our review. It was discussed that weekends and holidays cannot be validated in XML and this would have to be accomplished in the application. Once the Base Schema is created, it cannot be changed or the derived schemas will no longer work. The different groups will create derived schemas to test our base schema.

Jim Rowland of STAWRS presented the Illinois Withholding Coupon in XML. He showed the instance document and source for it also. He suggested we create a laundry list of all elements being used, create a basket of most common sets of elements, and make a master list to define them.

Glenda Hayes stated that if the base is too generic, there will be too much derivation in the derived schemas. She raised some questions to ponder. How do you put PKI in a document? How do you sign each document in the batch? How do you sign the whole document?

Jim Rowland asked how to relate an acknowledgement to a specific batch, and was answered that the batch has a control number to relate it to.

Bill Cook asked how data element error acknowledgements were identified, and was answered that the parser creates an indicator message acknowledgement.

Glenda Hayes showed what a restricted amount would look like in XML. She reported that MITRE could be developing as many as 32 schemas for the IRS 1120. They will develop a full 1120 base kernel with no schedules or other attachments. Then they will evaluate the complexity of the resulting schema. They are working on the customization of restricting size, noting complexity of versions, and how a transactional type would work with XML.

Ray Grimm, Stuart Beagles, and Larry Hanson gave a presentation on the latest work in Motor Fuel. They began their presentation with data modeling from the business perspective including the tax information. They wrote their instance document from the model. They have begun writing their schema. Every load of fuel reported is at a detail level. States roll up to the summary level by product. Fuel filing is the equivalent of tax filing. The report includes the tax information/return.

Tim Blevins noted that development direction should be based on the business customer needs and not industry requests. When customers fill out a form on the web, they do not know whether they are doing it in EDI, XML, etc.

Glenda Hayes, Xan Ostro, and Roger Lew presented the 941 Schema Types and General Elements, and said that Common Data Types will be incorporated into these.

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Friday, August 17, 2001 -- Tax Information Group for ECommerce Requirements Standardization (TIGERS)

There was a wrap-up discussion of the Base Schema work, and of what to do next with it.

A discussion was then begun on Sourcing Wireless Transactions. Each unit of telecommunication service will be sourced to the address of service whether it is a home or a business. FTA and MTC have been charged with developing a database format and it must be approved by ANSI X12 using traditional EDI. ANSI X12 only approves transaction sets. TIGERS will create a transaction set to meet these needs.

A transaction set will be presented at the Miami, FL meeting in October. The rest of the week will be devoted to XML development.