In an effort to reduce employer tax filing burden, states have partnered with the Federal government to develop a standardized approach to electronically file Form 940 and 941.Under the Federal State Employment Tax program, 12 states and software developers worked together to develop a single state schema to support Federal State Employment Tax e-file.The IRS has agreed to house the state schemas at the www.irs.gov web site allowing other states and software developers a one-stop approach to software development.
Because IRS is serving as a repository of the state schemas, the following process is recommended to ensure that changes to the schema are documented and handled in a way that would reduce the opportunity for duplication while at the same time allow postings to occur with a minimal delay.Version control will provide a history of the changes and record when changes are approved.
Chair, ASCX12G-TIGERS - Will serve as the Liaison between IRS and TIGERS. All changes will flow through the Chair. No changes to state schemas will be posted without final approval by Chair, ASCX12G-TIGERS
TIGERS - Will review and approve or reject all proposed changes that would modify the state schemas. TIGERS will identify all affected parts of the schemas and Users Guide as a result of any change.
Federal State Employment Tax
Analyst - Will serve as the conduit to receive accepted changes
and send proposed changes to TIGERS through the Chair. The analyst
will number and load all accepted changes to the www.irs.gov
web site. In addition, the analyst will forward all proposed federal
94x XML schema changes to Chair, ASCX12G-TIGERS. The analyst will
not modify the schema with the exception of stripping out the
Federal 94x XML schema parts from the transmission to avoid having to
maintain two locations for the Federal 94x XML schemas. The analyst
will monitor and control links from IRS as well as coordinate with
FTA to have a link to their website and will provide feedback to FTA
for changes to IRS website.
Internal Revenue Service - The IRS will make available its web
site to house the state schemas under the Federal State Employment
Tax Program.The IRS will have a link from the state schemas to the
Federation of Tax Administrators (FTA).
Definition: Those changes that originate with a new state added to the FSET Program, changes originating with states already involved in the FSET Program, or changes originated with TIGERS.
Process:
1. Changes will be submitted for review to TIGERS. Once reviewed and approved by TIGERS, the changes will be incorporated in the state schema. The modified schema will be forwarded to Chair X12 Sub-Group, TIGERS, who will serve as the liaison between TIGERS and IRS. The Chair will forward the modified schema to the FSET Analyst, Tracy Green-Caster, for loading on the www.irs.gov site.
2. Once the modified schema is received, the FSET analyst will provide a version number and date prior to loading on the IRS web site. The version number will include four (4) Alpha characters (FSET) and five (5) numeric characters (##.##). The date associated with the schema will be the date approved by TIGERS. Therefore, it is important that this date be included in the e-mail message from FTA. The original upload will be considered version 01.00. The next version will appear as FSET 01.01 10072002 and will increase incrementally until version 99.999 is reached.
3.The FSET Analyst will only accept approved submissions from TIGERS for upload received from the Chair. E-mail messages will be acknowledged as received by FSET.
4.The schema uploads will occur within five (5) calendar days after receipt.
1. When there is a change to the Federal 94x XML schema, there will be an email sent to the Employment Tax Partners prior to implementation for feedback. Comments received from the partners will go to the Federal 94x XML Change Control Board (CCB).
2. Once a change to the Federal 94x XML schema has been approved by the 94x XML CCB, notification of the change will be sent to Chair X12 Sub-Group, TIGERS. Notification will include specific information on what was changed, why the change was necessary, and when the change will be made.
3. The chair will present the change to TIGERS for consideration. (Note: changes to the Federal 94x XML schema will not necessarily be made to the state schemas.)
4. At this point, the process will follow Steps 1 through 4 for state schemas