Participation in TIGERS is open to anyone in government, service providers, industry or other representatives. If you are implementing an EC process in your agency and are not aware of or participating in the work of these groups, please get in touch with the person listed below as a contact.
TIGERS Industry Co-Chair: Vacant
Secretary: Donna Muccilli, donnamuccilli@cox.net
Program Staff: Jonathan Lyon , FTA - jonathan.lyon@taxadmin.org
Among other initiatives, one of the emphases of TIGERS is to review opportunities for consistency in state and federal filing processes. Individual tax authorities should use available guidelines, formats, and the like for each tax application they are putting in place, and actively seek TIGERS group guidance in implementation, strictly limiting "customization". This will benefit all trading partners and reduce their cost.
STANDARDS AREAS
There are three areas that the TIGERS group has concentrated its
standards and uniformity efforts:
Below is a discussion of these and links to additional information.
eXtensible Markup Language (XML)
By partnering with the IRS and through independent evaluation and analysis of state requirements for taxes (like sales) not shared in common with the federal government, TIGERS has been able to develop an approach to the creation of XML schemas covering essential elements of filing such as liability, payment, acknowledgment , authentication, and other components, as well as modeling a communications gateway intended to enable the development of tax programs for the filing and sharing of many different kinds of tax data.
This would encompass:
(1) a generic approach to joint tax filing programs with the IRS. This is intended to facilitate the implementation of new programs such as Corporate Income (IRS Form 1120) and Partnership (IRS Form 1065) and the migration of existing Fed-State joint filing programs like Fed-State E-File - IRS Form 1040.
(2) a standard approach across states to the creation of XML schemas for other taxes - for example sales tax (particularly in service of the states' Streamlined Sales Tax Program), motor fuel excise tax, tobacco products tax and other taxes that are destined to become a larger part of state tax bases, for example telecommunications taxes.
(3) the future opportunity for simpler and faster exchange of compliance data - with the IRS and between states.
Click here
to access additional information on TIGERS efforts in XML
standardization.
Mobile Sourcing of Telecommunications (Wireless)
TIGERS has also been involved in the creation of an ASC X12-approved standard to source mobile telecommmunications transactions.
In July 2000, Congress approved the Mobile Telecommunications Sourcing Act (P.L. 106-252). The Act is intended to address, for transactional tax purposes only, the problem of determining the situs of a cellular telephone call, which has proven to be difficult under normal standards of sourcing transactions. The Act addresses this problem by sourcing all wireless calls and mobile telecommunications services to the "place of primary use" (PPU), which will essentially be the customer's residence or business address. Only the state and/or sub-state taxing jurisdictions encompassing the PPU could tax the calls or service.
Section 119 of the Act provides that each state may provide vendors with an electronic database that assigns each address in the state to the appropriate taxing jurisdiction and that vendors will be held harmless for errors resulting from the use of such a database provided by a state.
The section also delineates the technological standards that a state-provided database must meet, and provides that the format for such a database must be approved by the American National Standards Institute's Accredited Standards Committee X12. In addition, each state's database must provide a standard way of identifying each taxing jurisdiction that is consistent with a "one nationwide standard numeric code" that employs a format similar to "FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard) 55-3," a standard now employed in various contexts, "or some other appropriate standard approved by the Federation of Tax Administrators and the Multistate Tax Commission, or their successors."
Thus, FTA and MTC were in the position of establishing a standard data format for use in databases employed by states. The two organizations have coordinated efforts to develop a national-standard data format for use in matching addresses with taxing jurisdictions in compliance with the provisions of the Act. This enables individual states, at their option, to provide electronic data or databases linking tax rates to specific locations for the use of wireless service providers in billing their customers.
Following industry input and significant work by an FTA/MTC Wireless Task Group and TIGERS, during the June 2002 meeting of ANSI ASC X12, a new standard was approved via ballot approval of X12 members.
The Tax Jurisdiction Sourcing EDI transaction set (TS 158) was developed for use by a wireless telecommunications service provider to transmit an address, using US Postal Service standard components, to the holder of a sourcing database for a given state, and to receive in return the set of taxing jurisdictions having governance over that address, thus assisting in the determination of the correct tax. A standard flat file is also available for use.
For additional information on the mobile sourcing standard, click here.
Electronic Data Interchange Standards
In 1979 the American National Standards Committee (ANSI) created
an "Accredited Standards Committee" (ASC), denoted "X12", that
addresses business-to-business exchange of electronic documents in a
standard format.
Since 1988 the FTA, as well as a number of state revenue departments, have become members of ANSI ASC X12 and have assisted in creating a variety of tax-related standard electronic transactions.
Approved ANSI ASC X12 formats useful in tax administration:
- "TXP" Segment (Use in CCD+ for ACH Credit Payment)
- TS 813 - Electronic Filing of Tax Return Data (+ Payment Instruction)
- TS 820 - (Generic) Payment Order/Remittance Advice (includes TXP Segment)
- TS 997 - Functional (Syntactic) Acknowledgment (data format acknowledgment)
- TS 151 - Electronic Filing of Tax Return Data Acknowledgment (content acknowledgment)
- TS 150 - Tax Rate Notification (withholding tables, sales tax, etc.)
- TS 149 - Notice of Tax Assessment or Adjustment - Agency-to-taxpayer
- TS 153 - Unemployment Insurance Tax Claim or Charge
- TS 826 - Tax Information Exchange - Agency-to-agency, agency-to-3rd party
- TS 540 - Notice of Employment Status (report of new hire/termination, and validation of employee SSN - & response)
- TS 521 - Income or Asset Offset (order to withhold/levy on income or asset in hands of another party - & response w/payment)
- TS 157 - Notice of Power of Attorney
- TS 103 - Notice of Abandoned Property
- TS 283 - Electronic Exemption Certificate
- TS 154 - Secured Interest Filing
- TS 158 - Tax Jurisdiction Sourcing
EDI Transaction Sets and the other documents are published by the
Data Interchange Standards Association for a fee. Connect to their
web site at
www.x12.org
for ordering information.
For specific information on EDI-based tax transaction conventions, click here.