OASIS Members Form Tax XML Technical Committee.

Business Editors & High-Tech Writers

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 9, 2002

-- Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, Inland Revenue of the

United Kingdom, United States Internal Revenue Service, IBM,

Oracle, Republica, SAP, Software AG, Vertex, and Other OASIS

Members Collaborate on Tax Information Exchange Standard

Members of the OASIS interoperability consortium have formed a technical committee to advance an open, international standard for the exchange of tax-related information. The new OASIS Tax XML Technical Committee brings together representatives from government agencies in Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, United Kingdom and United States, as well as global businesses and financial institutions, to develop a common vocabulary that will allow tax reporting and compliance information to be unambiguously identified and exchanged.

"Everyone stands to gain from Tax XML," stated Gregory Carson of the United States Internal Revenue Service, chair of the OASIS Tax XML Technical Committee. "Software vendors and tax agencies will no longer need to maintain jurisdictionally specific applications and interchange standards. CRM, payroll, and financial developers will be able to reduce their system integration costs. Even taxpayers will benefit from the increased services that will be made possible by more flexible Tax XML interchange formats."

The products of Tax XML will include a vocabulary of terms, a repository of artifacts including XML templates, documents exchanged for tax compliance, best practices, guidelines and recommendations for practical implementation. The OASIS Tax XML participants will evaluate and build their new specification on existing XML standards for business information, including the Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) and others.

Participation in the OASIS Tax XML Technical Committee remains open to all organizations and individuals. OASIS will host an open mail list for public comment, and completed work will be freely available to the public without licensing or other fees. Information on joining OASIS can be found on http://www.oasis-open.org/join. The first meeting of the OASIS Tax XML Technical Committee will be held at the IDEAlliance XML 2002 Conference in Baltimore on 12 December 2002.

Support for Tax XML

"XML is the most promising technology for developing a foundation of standards focused on information exchange. The OASIS Tax XML Technical Committee, consisting of government-sponsored organizations and commercial enterprises, represents an outstanding opportunity to develop a set of standards that will support and accelerate the ability to exchange tax-oriented information in an open and standard way so that all entities involved in the tax compliance process can benefit. Vertex is very pleased to be part of this initiative," said John Viglione, Chief Technology Officer of Vertex Inc.

"Baltimore welcomes the establishment of the OASIS Tax XML Technical Committee. Having implemented two of the principal secure on-line tax filing systems using PKI in Australia and Ireland, the emergence of subject specific areas of XML usage such as taxation is a critical development in the formulation and harmonization of electronic business messaging," said Jack Nagle, Director of Public Sector Marketing for Baltimore Technologies.

About OASIS (http://www.oasis-open.org)

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, global consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. OASIS produces worldwide standards for security, Web services, XML conformance, business transactions, electronic publishing, topic maps and interoperability within and between marketplaces. OASIS has more than 600 corporate and individual members in 100 countries around the world.