PLS working group key messages

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Title: / Practitioner lodgment service working group
Issue date: / 2 February 2018 /
Venue: / WebEx /
Event date: / 30 January 2018 / Start:1:00pm AEDT / Finish:1:40pm
Chair: / Martin Mane / Facilitator: / Scott Rumford /
Contact / Scott Rumford / Contact phone: / (02) 4923 1201 /
Attendees:
names/section / ATO – Allison Makin, Anne Soe, Belinda Sheehan, Brendan Woolcock, Danny Figueiredo, David Tong, Doipayon Halder, Gary Anderson, Gary Warne, Glen Wellington, Joe Maxymenko, Luke Beaman, Martin Mane, Michael Job, Mick Ferris, Scott Rumford, Timothy Stimson.
Industry –Jack Wee (Catsoft), Mike Denniss (Class Super), Sandeep Gopalan (Impact), Mike Behling (MYOB), Nathan Kerr (One Click Life), Kevin Johnson (Reckon), Darin Carter, Michael Wright, Saiful Larry (Sage), Paul Siriwardana, Shane Paxton (Thomson Reuters), Andrew Sprankling (Xero).
Apologies:
name/section / ATO – Andrew Watson, Craig Woodburn, Nimali Abeygunasekara, Sandra Drummond, Sharna Maltman. /
Next meeting / 13 February 2018 /
Agenda item: 2 – Focus group update
The focus group exploring generic error messaging and ATO business processes during an incident has developed an approach paper in response to our use of the de-whitelisting error message when bringing the system down for maintenance. We will take a three-phased approach:
  1. Change the wording of the error message to the short and long description recommended by the focus group
  2. Create a new message for complete outages (i.e. split the message into two – one error for de-whitelisting andanother for outages)
  3. Deliver targeted messages for specific service outages where appropriate (pending a feasibility assessment).
We do not have any confirmed timeframes for the work at this stage, but we will keep you informed.
Agenda item: 3 – Action items update
We have provided updates for each of the outstanding action items.
Agenda item: 4 – PLS business update
  • Approximately two thirds of company tax return lodgments are already being received through PLS prior to the 1February 2018 ELS decommissioning. This is the highest percentage of any previous core service decommissioned.
  • PLS usage has been quiet over the January period as traditionally expected. 58% of all electronic lodgments are now coming through PLS.
  • We have concentrated our engagement with the tax profession on some rural agents and received positive feedback as the majority have switched to PLS or are in the process of switching.

Agenda item: 5 – Tax agent communication
  • Our newsletters last week included reminders about the upcoming company tax return form transition on 1 February 2018.
  • We also posted reminders through the ATO Twitter and LinkedIn accounts last week.
  • We will be re-running an article from late last year, tips for switching to the PLS, in February.
  • We will then switch to reminding practitioners about the individual tax return form transition of 1 April 2018.

Agenda item: 6 – Tax Time 2018 schedule
We have updated the release on a page to show our plan for the final few iterations of Tax Time 2018. Some of the changes are listed below:
  • IEE and FTER documentation updates will occur in iteration 5
  • We will move some of the C# and taxonomy architecture transition from iteration 5 to iteration 6.
  • We will remove the IITR, NRFI information and some CTR C# transitions out of iteration 6 and add them in iteration 7.
  • The final drops of information for CTR, TRT, RDTIS, ABNREG and ABNREGTAXADD will be in iteration 7.
We hope to finalise rate information from the Budget in iteration 7, but there is also a window in iteration 8.
Agenda item: 7 – IITR pre-fill issues
We are working through some IITR pre-fill problemsconsisting of incidents raised in TT18 and known irritants from TT17 andwill provide an overview of the issues prior to the next meeting.We are looking to upgrade pre-fill capability where our wholesale services differed from the retail offerings.
We are also looking to include the real-time analytics service discussed at the services for tax practitioners event last year into the TT18 timeline. We will potentially include it in the Q3 implementation so you can focus on legislative requirements before this value-add service.
Agenda item: 8 – Platform update
  • Both production environments (i.e. PROD1 and PROD2) have been running well in terms of availability despite a mainframe issue on 16 January 2018 that was rectified after hours.
  • We have also been tracking system errors and only noticed some slight issues with Access Manager over the past fortnight.
  • In terms of performance, 90% of transactions are meeting our five second service level.
  • We will review our checklist to ensure that everything is running smoothly and all services are fully operational before bringing the system back online.

Agenda item: 9 – DSP feedback and readiness
MYOB
  • Would like to communicate to their clients about the PLS dashboard beta and are interested in hearing the findings from agents in the pilot.

Action item:
30/01 – 01 / Due date:
Tuesday 13 February 2018 / Responsibility:
Gary Warne
Provide an update on the pilot of the PLS dashboard beta with agents.

You can review background material at

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