Chris, I am taking a closer look at the ATO's direct lodgement API which is a common business reporting protocol across a number of government agencies as well as the tax office. At the moment in Australia individuals and sole traders cannot directly upload their data except through a registered Tax Agent or BAS(GT) Agent ( separate business providing these services). They are required to use the online website portal which is a form like web interface.
Businesses (trusts, partnerships, private and public companies) can either upload their reports directly or via a Tax/BAS agent This uses a Standard Business Reporting protocol (https://www.sbr.gov.au/digital-service-providers) as mentioned above which uses XBRL (XML business reporting - https://www.xbrl.org/the-standard/what/specifications/) for messages. (This seems to be in use in UK,US, Australia and a number of other countries (https://www.xbrl.org/the-standard/why/who-else-uses-xbrl/) but in what capacity is not clear. An XBRL taxonomy defines the data elements used in communicating. These are defined across a range of government services in Australia by https://www.taxonomy-collaboration.sbr.gov.au/yeti/resources/yeti-gwt/Yeti.jsp. Authentication requires an encrypted key (AUSkey) which is issued to business. This has a set of levels of authorization associated with it which I have yet to look at closely which individuals acting for a business can be assigned. The software development and certification process is well defined (https://www.sbr.gov.au/digital-service-providers/software-development-steps). I was hoping that someone had developed a bridging type sodtware as described in the UK system but as AFAIK most of the authorized software available are commercial accounting packages (https://www.sbr.gov.au/australian-taxation-office-ato-browse-form#bas) only one of which is free. The ATO business portal web interface can up load XBRL files formatted in accordance with the Aus SBR taxonomy for the appropriate submission usually prepared by your nice expensive commercial software. This should be fairly simple for a BAS return. It has been close to 15 years since I last had to submit one but from memory it was only 4-5 fields. In this case there is no authorization required as you are already logged in securely using the encrypted key so that hassle is avoided. I remember looking at a UK VAT return sometime ago and it was almost identical to the BAS return. The problem from the GnuCash perspective will be dealing the country to country variations in requirements. The HMRC requirement that the data can only be uploaded in a few specific formats seems to be an audit trail type of requirement of some sort, but when two of those formats (CSV and XML) are editable with a text editor this seems a bit of a ridiculous requirement. They are presuming, I guess, that file creation/modifcation access dates are not hackable. I know in Linux it is possible to make files immutable to other than a superuser and presume this is the case for other OS filesystems as well. But short of encryption and using checksums it is unlikely one could guarantee a file had not been altered. Cutting and pasting data into a webform should be equally acceptable provided you keep the original it was cut and paste from but when it comes to tax authorities trying to reason why can be headache producing. I will try and see if I can track down the Australian BAS formatts for a file submission. A report which produces an XML output in which the XML tags can be configured for individual requirements may be the way to go to meet both UK and Aus and other requirements easily. A quick check on Canada indicates their GST/HST is similar to UK and Aus and I guess most of the EU will be similar as well but I have no info on the reporting requirements/mechanisms in other countries at this stage. If XBRL is adopted widely enough it may eeventually become as simple as loading an appropriate taxonomy file using the locale setting - long way off though. I suspect that before too long most business and even individual reporting to government authorities will become completely electronic around the world. The next generation may never be aware it was ever done an other way, let alone by snail mail. Possibly better to switch this part of the discussion to the dev forum. David Cousens ----- David Cousens -- Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
