Re: [tax] Have a look at the positionpaper and send final comments to be included in the paper

[Philip Allen <plega-oasis@decisionsoft.com>]

On Thursday 20 May 2004 21:20, Harm-Jan van Burg wrote:

> Chistine Beasly and her team at ATO were asked by me to work though the
> position paper before the meeting one more time. I think we could make it
> sharper and therefore more useful for tax administrations round the
> world. It is important that the paper sends out a clear message that
> cooperation is useful, that open standards are important and that we are
> willing to lead the way.

Assuming that I have got the right paper (!) - v2.1 of 9 October - I have
some comments.

1. The reference to the UK's Inland Revenue and their acceptance of PDF
for Corporation Tax returns from smaller companies.  I think it is fair to
say that this is expected to be a transitional arrangement and that online
CT returns will move in due course to 100% XML/XBRL.  [Andy Greener will
correct me if I'm being unduly optimistic here.]  The message that the ATO
should take from this could usefully be that implementations which affect
the whole of a national economy are not always best delivered in their
final form on day one: a phased approach is often preferable for all
concerned.  

2. The reference to the different "factions" in the TaxXML community.  I
think it would be more useful to describe the different areas of
competence and overlap of the different areas mentioned - TaxXML, XBRL, US
IRS Schemas.  These all fulfil different purposes and the ATO should make
its decisions based on the needs of their online programs.  For instance,
TaxXML is being devised (as I understand it) primarily to support
international exchange of tax information; the IRS Schemas are (I assume)
for IRS-taxpayer interactions; XBRL is designed for corporate financial
data.  XML on its own is used at the very least for message envelopes and
headers - and vary greatly from implementation to implementation.  Perhaps
a Venn diagram might be helpful to clarify the relationships between all
these different standards.

-- 
Philip Allen, Chairman      DecisionSoft Limited
+44-1865-203192             http://www.decisionsoft.com