PLS Roundtable Outcomes

PLS Roundtable Outcomes

/ UNCLASSIFIED External
File ref: 26092017
Title: / ABSIA / ATO PLS Transition Roundtable Teleconference #41
Issue date: / 29 September 2017
Venue: / Telepresence / WebEx / Teleconference
Event date: / 26 September 2017 / Start: 13:00 AEST / Finish: 14:30
Chair: / Martin Mane / Facilitator: / Scott Rumford
Contact / Scott Rumford / Contact phone: / (02) 4923 1201
Attendees:
names/section / Industry: Jack Wee (Catsoft), Nagaraj Veerachettiar (GovReports), Lex Edmonds (Microtax), Mike Behling (MYOB), Kevin Johnson (Reckon), Darin Carter, Michael Wright (Sage), Kelvin Newton (Xero).
ATO: Allison Makin, Belinda Sheehan, Chanara Fraser, Craig Woodburn, David Allen, Deanne McPaul, Doipayon Halder, Gary Baxter, Gary Warne, Ian Scensor, Joe Maxymenko, Martin Mane, Michael Job, Ross Barns, Scott Rumford, Sharna Maltman.
Apologies:
name/section / Industry: Jeevan Tokhi (BGL).
ATO: Andrew Watson.
Next meeting / 24 October 2017
Agenda item: – Welcome and Introductions /
Participants were welcomed and attendance recorded.
Agenda item: – Previous Outcomes and Action Items /
Outcomes from the previous meeting were accepted and updates were provided for each of the open action items (as per the updated action items register).
Agenda item: – Transition to PLS /
·  As of 21 September 2017, over 32% of tax agent lodgments for the month were submitted via PLS.
·  We have received over 1.5 million returns to date through the PLS channel this year including 18,740 lodgments on Monday despite the system outage.
·  Our engagement team have visited 1,153 agents and contacted another 15,300 by phone. The environment appears to have changed in the last month, with increased awareness of PLS and more agents contacting us with questions or for assistance. Agents are also paying attention to communication they are receiving from their DSP.
Action item:
26/09 – 01 / Due date:
Tuesday 24 October 2017 / Responsibility:
Gary Warne
Investigate whether we can provide a further breakdown of other form types and include activity statement lodgment statistics in the PLS take-up briefing.
Agenda item: – Micro-groups /
Exploring real-time analytics for tax practitioners
·  The group met on Friday 15 September 2017 to explore the following three elements:
1.  Prior-year messaging – the position was accepted and should be relatively easy to implement.
2.  Real-time messaging – it was agreed that this would be valuable as a longer term prospect and could be achieved offline, using a web call, or as part of the pre-lodgment service. We are investigating how this could be implemented and will come back to the group with details around the viability of each option and when we could deliver them.
3.  Provision of lower level information – we will be consulting with tax agents to see how this element fits in with their business practices and are looking at how the design may impact ATO policy.
·  We are looking to hold the next meeting in the next fortnight to provide an update on what is possible for Tax Time 2018 and Tax Time 2019.
·  In terms of the lower level information, there are about 122,000 agents that will lodge the work-related expenses schedule for the 2016 year. It is not a mandatory item and we only request it if an agent is required to lodge it as part of an audit process.
Transactions involving cancelled ABNs
·  We have published a recommendation paper and will seek endorsement from the Technical Working Group (TWG) given the broad impact of the changes. Draft error messaging will also be shared with DSPs and agents for feedback.
Generic error messaging and ATO business processes during an incident
·  This group is looking to change the text of the error message that users currently receive (i.e. the software has not been whitelisted for a particular service) to more accurately reflect its purpose when a service is taken down during maintenance or an incident.
·  We will distribute a recommendation paper to the micro group members and this group before seeking endorsement from the TWG.
Agenda item: – PLS Confidence Indicators /
The PLS confidence indicators as at 18 September 2017 show good performance and stability in the eCommerce platform. Feedback we are receiving indicates that we are prioritising the right issues and fixing the most important defects.
We are currently in the analysis phase of a piece of work to make our end-to-end system more resilient, which includes plans to ‘disconnect’ the backend from the SBR2 platform to minimise the impacts of any future incidents.
The performance of SRP transmissions has improved in line with additional infrastructure (e.g. memory) and database tuning.
We do not have enough data to provide accurate timings for transmissions in PROD2, which is why it looks to be performing slowly.
Agenda item: – Tax Agent Communication and Readiness /
·  A recording of the webcast we ran on 14 September is now available.
·  We recently introduced a portal message topic for tax practitioners to make requests for PLS deferrals. An update is pending on the ATO website to outline this new process to practitioners. This allows them to share client details with us more easily. The process for DSPs requesting PLS deferrals remains the same, and we have published a new page on the software developers website to outline this process.
·  Posts went up on the ATO Twitter and LinkedIn accounts last week to remind practitioners about the impending partnership tax return form transition date of 1 October 2017.
·  A reminder will also issue in the tax professionals newsletter this week around the partnership tax return form.
·  We will be promoting the next form transition date of 11 November 2017 for self-managed superannuation fund annual returns, trust tax returns and fund income tax returns on 4 October 2017.
Agenda item: – IITR Fix for Validation Rules VR.ATO.IITR.600015 and VR.ATO.IITR.600016
The IITR Hot Fix Changes were proposed because IITR label A3 is being incorrectly populated and resulting in incorrect co-contributions entitlements. In the interim, we are implementing a manual workaround to ignore the co-contributions application unless the whole question is completed.
It was noted that DSPs have different release schedules and are reliant on desktop clients actually downloading updates as they become available.
Action item:
26/09 – 02 / Due date:
Tuesday 24 October 2017 / Responsibility:
Craig Woodburn
Doipayon Halder
Joe Maxymenko
Explore the difference between VR.ATO.IITR.600015 and the corresponding ELS edit, and work with DSPs to determine a viable release date for PROD.
Agenda item: – Issues and Incidents /
The ATO Q3 release over the weekend included a number of changes to our back office systems as well as those to SBR1 and SBR2. Our platform changes were deployed smoothly and did not introduce any reliability issues. However, there was an issue with one of the backend systems that resulted in some degradation on Monday morning.
We are reviewing what occurred to avoid a repeat of the incident and are looking at how we responded to the issue. One thing that we can improve on is the timing of our communication.
A driver on all of the production servers needs to be updated to further improve reliability, but we want to make sure it has been fully tested first. We may use the published Saturday night outages a couple of weeks in a row if not a new window.
It is possible to have alphanumeric characters in Australian bank account numbers but ATO forms disallow them. The bank account number definition is from the SBR definitional taxonomy, so there is no way to fix it without creating a new version of the taxonomy. We will investigate the available options and look to set up a micro group to resolve the issue or develop an acceptable interim solution.
DSP Matters of Readiness/Pain Points
Reckon
·  Raised 5 incidents with the SBR Service Desk last week, but only received 3 responses
Action item:
26/09 – 03 / Due date:
Tuesday 24 October 2017 / Responsibility:
Craig Woodburn
Martin Mane
Update the known incidents and lists page to ensure DSPs have visibility of the current issues.
Agenda item: – PLS roundtable /
Given the number of engagements on in the week starting 9 October 2017, the group agreed to cancel the next meeting unless urgent issues arise with the partnership tax return transition.
Agenda item: – Close /
The next meeting will be held on Tuesday 24 October 2017.

If you have any feedback about the purpose and content of this meeting or suggestions to improve how it is run, please email .

UNCLASSIFIED External 2