[tax] a contribution to the discussion on the focus of the Tax-XML TC

["H.J.M. van Burg" <hjvanburg@burgcomm.nl>]

Greetings and best wishes to you all,

Excuse me for my English; I am not normally using it as writing
Language.

Unfortunately I could not be present in Baltimore so perhaps I double
some thoughts.
Having read the contribution from some of you and specially the last one
from Rod, it's perhaps good to stress the special nature of this TC, at
least in my eyes.
Some Tax administrations feel the need to work harder on the development
of XML schema's for the exchange of tax related information such as
declarations between businesses, individuals and tax administrations.
Preventing us all developing more or less the same "wheel" and promoting
interoperatability between administrations and within "taxable entities"
we have more of less looked for a forum to exchange best practices and
speed up developments.
At least in my opinion it is not at all necessary to develop a new
technical standard. The way it looks now I am quite happy to use XBRL
for forms and financial data and ebXML for transport. Unfortunately some
of us in the TC or perhaps only me because I am a policymaker and not a
technical expert (conceptual knowledge Dale Wald defined my XML skills
and I feel comfortable with that!) do not know if we cover the tax arena
with those standards. Besides that most administrations did not decided
on the standards they wanted to use and some administrations are also
tied to (pending) agreements within their government. And for some
administrations the policy is that we use standards and not develop
them. On the other hand  we are aware that sitting still and wait for
the standards do not bring them much closer. 
This is why I think it is important that administrations make clear what
they need so that software can be developed to facilitate the exchange
of tax related data. This making clear can be done by developing
schema's. At least that what we are going to do in my country.

So that leaves me with  some questions we could address:
- How far are we and how can we share information quickly?
- Is the route XBRL for message content and ebXML for transport a good
one?
- Which elements are we missing and could a supplementary Tax-XML
standard help here?
- Within the restrictions of all the tax laws (which we not are going to
solve in this TC) can we find common elements which can facilitate
exchange of tax data between countries? The OECD is already working on
that from the perspective of exchange between administrations. Can we
learn from that?
- Is it clear to everybody in the TC that the TC cannot become a
pressure group for changing tax-laws because tax-administrations are not
legislative bodies. So that if participating members want other tax-laws
this TC is not the place for it?

Furthermore I like the proposals of Rod. The idea to go the practical
route is for this TC the only route if all of the other members wants
the tax-administrations involved.

Harm Jan van Burg
Individual member, but working for The Netherlands Tax- and Customs
administration