December 4-5, 2000 Austin, TX Interim Meeting
Terry Garber opened the meeting with the tentative agenda. The planned agenda:
Monday, December 4, 2000 - 9:00 am/5:00 pm
Tuesday, December 5, 2000 - 9:00 am/3:00 pm
Terry Garber began the meeting with Welcome and Introductions. There were 40 people in attendance.
Jonathan Lyon gave the Background Introduction to TIGERS. He said that it was appropriate that the group was meeting in Austin - a critical point in the history of Tax EDI development happened in Austin nine years previously. At a meeting of the X12 Government Subcommittee's Tax Information Interchange Task Group it was determined how to use X12 looping structures to handle tax returns. This solved a serious design issue and enabled the creation of an EDI format that ,in the intervening years, has never been found incapable of mapping to a tax agency's tax return. He wished the group similar success in its tax XML design efforts.
Terry Garber then followed with more Introduction to TIGERS. DOD people originally founded the ASC X12 Government Subcommittee. In December 1994, in Austin, TX, the first TIGERS meeting was conducted. The purpose of TIGERS, as a workgroup under X12/TG2, is to promote consistency in electronic data interchange across the IRS, states, vendors, and service providers.
Terry then brought everyone up-to-date with what's been accomplished in EDI.
A Transaction Set 813 was established which can handle any type of tax form found to date. Tax Information and Amount (TIA) codes, which can be thought of as "tags," were established for Withholding, Sales Tax, Motor Fuel, and IFTA. The W3C Schema is now on the Web as a final recommendation, and changes should be minimal. .
There was discussion on a "Superschema". Should we try to develop a master XML schema for tax filings, similar to the T/S 813 "Superstructure" in EDI? Then we could follow with the development of Tax Type Schemas under the "Superschema". We'd develop a structure everyone would use; define types but not interaction between the types. We'd try to set up a generic schema, using a base set of tags. There would be derivation by extension for specific tax types.
Larry Hanson stated that the California schema can be derived by extension/restriction.
Bill Kerr stated that a hierarchy works on common used objects; structures everyone uses. A "Superstructure" is object modeling and decomposition, and specialization.
Bob Shickora noted a trend to combine filings and forms, and warned against isolating tax types.
Peter Horsburgh noted that there should be front-end vs. back-end validation (ie, data lengths), and allowances for customization for multiple uses should be made.
Terry Garber noted that TIGERS goal is to minimize the differences between the states.
We discussed Lesley Anderson's Hierarchy breakdown, and Peter Horsburgh presented his TaXML hierarchy of the United Kingdom PIT forms return schema.
There was discussion of the need to transmit both single returns and batches of returns from an originator. Consensus was that in XML it was possible to specify in the schema which elements can be the root element of the document - in this case, it could either be the taxpayer identification or the batch identification.
There was also discussion of the desire to separate the transmission header information, which could include the digital signature and which would be validated by the gateway, from the body of the document which would have its own schema.
Bill Kerr presented an XML Schema example for the United Kingdom and explained that Upper Camel Case is used for elements and Lower Camel Case is used for attributes. Then he displayed the STAWRS gateway demo to the group where they have a specific data listing surrounded by transmission envelope information and transformed from XML to the desired format.
Tuesday, December 5, 2000
Terry Garber opened the meeting at 9:00 AM.
Bill Kerr with Oracle in the United Kingdom walked us through the (England) tax administration (Inland Revenue) application of XML to filing, and the XML GovTalk header and gateway mechanisms which were newly devised for use with a variety of government data exchange transactions (not only tax). He said that the gateway is like a routing messenger where it checks the data to see where it needs to go and sends it there. The example was for one tax filing document only, and not a batch.
Larry Hanson began a discussion -- Why would a large XML file of multiple documents be sent, instead of a batch header first followed by multiple single transmissions?
Robert Sanford, Jr. said that a gateway is stateless. If you send a header, it wouldn't be able to tell who is in the next filing. He thinks that a parser can pull out individual documents.
Further discussion ensued that the header class could perhaps be changed to "Batch", and then include multiple tax reports in the body of the document. A conversation took place on how this would work for a file transmission vs. real-time over the Web. Real-time, you would need one document that featured the batch ID and associated documents. In a file transmission, you could have a separate batch document and separate "associated" group-body documents.
Robert Sanford, Jr. with NLS walked us through his T/S 813 header schema based on the GovTalk "body". We conferred that we might have a generic Base Class, and then constrain or restrict data types/elements, to create validation criteria against a specific tax agency schema, for a particular tax.
The group had a couple of views on XML development:
1) All see value in developing standard XML
core components, and
2) Some see a value in a standard "superschema" structure at the high
level.
Terry Garber pointed out that the TIGERS mission is to assist in uniformity and commonality, to benefit the states/multistate service providers/software providers.
Dave Curry of Vertex, Inc. asked how the above views would be resolved?
Terry Garber felt that the answer, as to best utility, will emerge from actually working on and developing a "superschema", and then attempting to apply it to specific tax types (create a "derived schema").
Using Robert Sanford, Jr.'s XML Header example, we "mapped" a simple Pennsylvania Withholding tax coupon. It seemed to work well. However, further work is needed on an XML "superschema body part", and subsequent development of derived examples based on specific taxes.
Discussions on the development schedule were held, and opportunities for meetings were outlined. The next scheduled TIGERS meeting is during the ASC X12 organization's meeting at the Sheraton Hotel in Seattle, Washington, February 5-8, 2001.
Beyond that, there are two March 2001 meeting opportunities (STAWRS and DISA), and an FTA E-file meeting April 29-May 2, 2001. At this point, no decision was arrived at on whether TIGERS would meet during these latter sessions.
It was decided that the group would set up sub-committees to work on the "Superschema", as well as "Derived Schemas" for Corporate, Sales and Use, Payroll, and Motor Fuel, and convene by teleconference on January 19, 2001. The intent is to have a strawman Superschema developed, and first cuts by the Working Committees of Derived Schema Elements by tax.
Group membership assignments are as follows:
XML Base Schema Development
Terry Garber
Robert Sanford, Jr.
Bill Kerr
Kevin Belden
Jim Rowland
Preston Barnett
Corporate Tax - Derived Schema Development
Xan Ostro
Joan Barr
Peter Horsburgh
Sales Tax - Derived Schema Development
Dave Curry
Stan Whaley
Brooks Knight
Tom Pantier
Larry Hanson
Payroll Tax - Derived Schema Development
Timur Taluy (and STAWRS-COTSPEF Data Format Team)
Jim Rowland
Tom Crowley
Peter Isberg
Paul Berglund
Motor Fuel Tax - Derived Schema Development
Stuart Beagles
Steve Magee
Stan Farmer
Larry Hanson
XML Development - Organization Liaison
Jonathan Lyon
Brooks Knight distributed an ebXML document evolved out of X12 and IETF-EDI over the Internet to be used as a informational by the sub-committees.
We reviewed Mary Stuart's T/S Business Scenarios to check validity. Terry Garber made notes on foils to send back to her.
ATTENDEES
Stuart Beagles, Montana
Brooks Knight, Texas
Sherrill Alexander, Texas
Terry Garber, South Carolina
Jonathan Lyon, FTA
Peter Horsburgh, Microsoft
Stan Farmer, Missouri
Timur Taluy, FileYourTaxes.com
Craig Reeves, Imaging Business Machines
Laurie Mitchell, Imaging Business Machines
Tom Pantier, Illinois
Debbie Johnson, Oklahoma
Steve Magee, Kansas
Kevin Belden, IBM Global
Robert Sanford, No Limit Systems
Donna Hockensmith, U.S. Treasury
Jim Rowland, Consultant
Tom Crowley, Maryland
Larry Hanson, California BOE
Stan Whaley, Florida
Greg Carson, IRS-ETA
Dayna Sefcik, IRS-ETA
Joan Barr, IRS-ETA
Michael McCrea, IRS-Information Systems
Xan Ostro, IRS-Information Systems
Paul A. Berglund, Federal Liaison Services
Bob Schickora, New Jersey
Nina De Forge, ProBusiness, Inc.
Peter Isberg, ADP
Raj Rajagopol, Mitre Corp.
Glenda Hayes, Mitre Corp.
Steven A. Bilhimer, Washington State
Dave Curry, Vertex Inc.
Bill Kerr, Oracle
Martha Sandoval, Texas Workforce Commission
John Rampulla, Deloitte Consulting