Re: [tax-comment] Public Comment

[Todd Boyle <tboyle@rosehill.net>]

Hi Mark, I can relate; used to work for Alexander & Alexander before
their demise..

The emergence of standards for semantics is taking a long
time. There was a collossal explosion of incompatible XML
dialects right after XML came out 98-99 and some of them
were so badly needed they took root and are in wide use.
But in the long run everybody knows, they need to be interrelated
with each other, within some common framework.  There
really aren't any industries or endeavors that are islands,
they all need to interoperate at their boundaries.

 From working on the core components workgroup of ebXML
and on GL standards in OMG it seems to me, the place
to watch for solutions is one of the big semantic registry
projects.  Either the Registry Repository here on OASIS, or
the evolving UDDI / web services stack.  Or research what
is happening in non-XML metadata registries (ISO 11179)
Or, the emergent "semantic web", i.e. the pure XML, XLink,
X-everything if you can figure out how it works..  I'm not
that high on things when they're so complicated.  I think the
RegRep is the good platform.

Then having a platform, look at whatever semantic library
or taxonomy, you think has the best set of common,
economic events and attributes in it.

At the end of the day, taxation processes refer to economic
phenomena in the real world.  It seems to me, there is little
likelihood there will be "Tax XML" with a whole set of semantics,
iterating thru every kind of economic event that might be taxable,
but separate from EDI, EDIFACT, or other transaction semantics.

Rather, as groups like UBL, OAG, etc. progress their work towards
common horizontal vocabularies, they will engage tax experts
to provide names and definitions of the additional 50 or 100
information elements, to describe how a tax may be computed,
how bases may be measured, how geographic jurisdictions or
agencies etc. are identified etc...
hope this helps,
but I guess it doesn't,
Todd Boyle CPA   Kirkland WA 98033 - http://www.ledgerism.net/

At 02:30 PM 10/28/2003, comment-form@oasis-open.org wrote:
>Comment from: mark.horowitz@towers.com
>
>hello.
>
>has this TC produced the documents which were envisioned at its inception ?
>
>i am a 'software' actuary at Towers Perrin in philadelphia. i am heavily
>involved in the development of pension valuation software. i have been
>pushing the use of xml here since early 1998.
>
>as we are produced new software for preparing information for completing
>the 5500's, i began to wonder whether there was any initiative to create an
>xml vocabulary for 5500 information and transmittal. an associated schema
>would permit validation of such documents before sending to the irs.
>
>this idea seems much too obvious to not at least have been discussed
>elsewhere.
>
>has it ?
>
>any information along these lines would be most appreciated.
>
>sincerely,
>
>mark horowitz, ASA, MAAA
>towers perrin
>philadelphia
>
>
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