[announce] OASIS Press Release: Tax XML TC

[Carol Geyer <carol.geyer@oasis-open.org>]

OASIS Members Form Tax XML Technical Committee

Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, Inland Revenue of the United Kingdom,
United States Internal Revenue Service, IBM, Oracle, Republica, SAP,
Software AG, Vertex, and Other OASIS Members Collaborate on Tax
Information Exchange Standard

Boston, MA, USA; 9 December 2002--Members of the OASIS interoperability
consortium have formed a technical committee to advance an open,
international standard for the exchange of tax-related information. The
new OASIS Tax XML Technical Committee brings together representatives
from government agencies in Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, United
Kingdom and United States, as well as global businesses and financial
institutions, to develop a common vocabulary that will allow tax
reporting and compliance information to be unambiguously identified and
exchanged.

"Everyone stands to gain from Tax XML,"  stated Gregory Carson of the
United States Internal Revenue Service, chair of the OASIS Tax XML
Technical Committee. "Software vendors and tax agencies will no longer
need to maintain jurisdictionally specific applications and interchange
standards. CRM, payroll, and financial developers will be able to reduce
their system integration costs. Even taxpayers will benefit from the
increased services that will be made possible by more flexible Tax XML
interchange formats."

The products of Tax XML will include a vocabulary of terms, a repository
of artifacts including XML templates, documents exchanged for tax
compliance, best practices, guidelines and recommendations for practical
implementation. The OASIS Tax XML  participants will evaluate and build
their new specification on existing XML standards for business
information, including the Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL)
and others.

Participation in the OASIS Tax XML Technical Committee remains open to
all organizations and individuals. OASIS will host an open mail list for
public comment, and completed work will be freely available to the
public without licensing or other fees. Information on joining OASIS can
be found on http://www.oasis-open.org/join. The first meeting of the
OASIS Tax XML Technical Committee will be held at the IDEAlliance XML
2002 Conference in Baltimore on 12 December 2002.


Support for Tax XML

"XML is the most promising technology for developing a foundation of
standards focused on information exchange. The OASIS Tax XML Technical
Committee, consisting of government-sponsored organizations and
commercial enterprises, represents an outstanding opportunity to develop
a set of standards that will support and accelerate the ability to
exchange tax-oriented information in an open and standard way so that
all entities involved in the tax compliance process can benefit. Vertex
is very pleased to be part of this initiative," said John Viglione,
Chief Technology Officer of Vertex Inc.

"Baltimore welcomes the establishment of the OASIS Tax XML Technical
Committee. Having implemented two of the principal secure on-line tax
filing systems using PKI in Australia and Ireland, the emergence of
subject specific areas of XML usage such as taxation is a critical
development in the formulation and harmonization of electronic business
messaging," said Jack Nagle, Director of Public Sector Marketing for
Baltimore Technologies.


About OASIS (http://www.oasis-open.org)

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information
Standards) is a not-for-profit, global consortium that drives the
development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members
themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open
process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite
disparate efforts. OASIS produces worldwide standards for security, Web
services, XML conformance, business transactions, electronic publishing,
topic maps and interoperability within and between marketplaces. OASIS
has more than 600 corporate and individual members in 100 countries
around the world.

For more information:

Carol Geyer
Director of Communications
OASIS (www.oasis-open.org)
carol.geyer@oasis-open.org
+1.978.667.5115 x209