[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index] | [List Home]
Subject: RE: UBL Tax compliance
|
Mark,
If
this really was a question you would not have cc'd the whole group, so I will
answer political.
As far
as I know I was the only one voting against UBL 2.0 Many more others did not
vote at all. So is spreading negative remarks about me really
fair?
As
tax-xml we have conducted several attempts to work together with UBL. The UBL TC
however had no resources and interest (Marc Crawford) to work with us on the
basis of equality. We could deliver and UBL would decide if they would
listen. Furthermore participation was only possible when we contributed under
the UBL TC regulations. Of course this is UBL prerogative.
The
tax-xml is a small independent OASIS committee with predominantly government
members who do this work next to their normal day jobs (like many of us in the
standards community). We cannot keep up with a large TC like
UBL.
However we do have our opinions and position. E.g. we are the advisor to
the OECD tax community. In our position paper you can read how we think about
UBL.
Fact
is that UBL made clear that their primary interest is the trade community and
not the regulator or accounting community. That is fair. This also means that
for regulatory processes we cannot rely on -for instance- proper fiscal audit
trails.
For
the same reason tax-xml is developing an indirect taxation reference model. This
project is not finished yet. After finishing we will use the reference model to
advise the OECD in favor or against the use of UBL.
A
different position is that we have advised in favor of the use of XBRL for
tax-filing and accounting processes. This recommendation was officially accepted
in the OECD. Several OECD countries run or want to run XBRL projects now.
For the moment we see XBRL GL as the logical step for transactions. We have
ongoing interest in researching to possibility of letting UBL and XBRL "talk to
each other". This could be a powerful step forwards. Absolutely necessary for
that if we have cooperation on this. I have not seen any interest in the
UBL community for this issue. That is also fair.
Fact
is that the XBRL community works harder with us in real cooperation. So for that
reason we currently bet on XBRL-Gl rather than UBL
On
your original question: what is wrong? I can only simply answer that we have not
been able to establish that it is right. The advise to my own government is not
to follow the Danish example and wait at least two years to see if the UBL
specification reaches stability, if enough knowledge is available, if enough
mature commercial software solutions are available, if the accounting community
accepts UBL.
This
all does not mean that I am overall negative about UBL. On the contrary. However
I expect that embracing UBL might lead to heavy investments,, not only for the
government infrastructure but also for the business community. The whole idea
that the business community does not use UBL and that the government makes UBL
for invoicing mandatory is in my mind an absolute undesirable roadmap. This make
a standard suspect. The whole point with open standards is that a governments
reflects on and react on the business community and not pushes its own
proprietary solutions like it has done in the past. Open standards must an can
have a good business case. Governments cannot create that.
Regards,
Harm
Jan van Burg
|
[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index] | [List Home]