SAS in the Hungarian Tax Administration Modernisation Project

Transcription

1 SAS in the Hungarian Tax Administration Modernisation Project Károly BRÜLL APEH SZTADI Tax and Finance Data Centre Tax Administration Modernisation Project Árpád MAGYAR KFKI ISYS Ltd.

2 1. IT AT THE HUNGARIAN TAX ADMINISTRATION ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE OF THE HUNGARIAN TAX ADMINISTRATION DATA TO BE PROCESSED THE HUNGARIAN TAX ADMINISTRATION MODERNISATION PROJECT (TAMP) SELECTION OF AN APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT TOOL FOR THE MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEM PROJECT: SAS MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEM PROJECT: PHASE 1 (VIR1) OBJECTIVES OF THE PROJECT SCOPE OF THE PROJECT BENEFITS OF THE PROJECT TECHNICAL REALISATION CONCLUSIONS... 7

3 1. IT at the Hungarian Tax Administration 1.1. Organisational Structure of the Hungarian Tax Administration The main activities of the Hungarian tax administration apparatus are to assess, collect, manage and audit the most of central taxes like as personal income tax, profit taxes, turnover type taxes (like VAT), etc. Head Office of the tax administration is the Tax and Finance Control Office (APEH) led by a president, supervised by the Minister of Finance. The functions are performed by the county directorates (one per county, four in Budapest). All the directorates - including APEH - have their own IT Centre for some pre-processing and registration activities. IT and Tax Settlement Institution of APEH(APEH SZTADI) is responsible for the central IT processing activities. There is a hierarchy in the relations between APEH head office and directorates, as well as SZTADI and organisational units with the same competence and functions are absolutely equal Data to be processed Hungarian tax system is based on self-assessment. That means, a taxpayer - legal entities, corporate businesses of private individuals and private contractors as well as private individuals - should file returns (liability side), and arrange for transfer payment (cash management side). The information of the both sides are registered on a tax account of the taxpayer. Among the tax categories, there are about 45 tax codes in Hungary with different types of returns. Frequency of filing depends on tax category, extends from a fortnight to a year. Information about payment and return is not always synchronised on the tax account: at certain categories taxpayers should remit monthly, but file only once a year. Returns are to be sent to the county directorates, the cash management information arrive from the banks centrally to SZTADI. Data of the returns are pre-processed at local IT centres, using VAX, AXP computers, and LANs. The pre-processed data are sent by a file-post system through a country-wide network to SZTADI for central processing, the cumulated (management) information to APEH in printed form, in the traditional way. Cash management processing takes place at SZTADI. Different modules of this system are running on quite different platforms there: on Siemens BS2000/SESAM, VAX/VMS/FORTRAN, ALPHA/DSM, Clipper, Stand-alone PC/Pascal. The management information (mainly statistics) was recently sent to APEH in the traditional form and way. Data of the both sides (liability and cash management) meet at the tax account adjustment system running by SZTADI. After the process, data of the tax accounts are sent back through the file-post system to the counties, but they are accessible nation-wide on-line in Siemens/SESAM too. 1

4 Management information were produced up till now at APEH from collected and merged printouts. 2. The Hungarian Tax Administration Moderni sation Project (TAMP) APEH decided to start a project on the turn 1992/93 to modernise its activities in accordance with the changes in tax regulations, and introduce a new, flexible and cost effective system. APEH obtained the approval of the government agencies, a Loan Agreement could be reached with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in this way. A task-oriented temporary organisation was set up to manage and co-ordinate the running projects: the Tax Administration Modernisation Project Secretariat. The Secretariat applies internationally proven professional tools, such as PRINCE for supporting management in general, CASE-tool (LBMS), methodology (SSADM). Two strategic plans were prepared by the Secretariat: Tax Administration Modernisation Strategic Plan, to establish strategic projects, such as Introduction of a New Tax Identification System, Updating Tax Forms and the System of Tax Payments, Implementation of the Audit Support System; Information Technology Strategic Plan to describe the current IT in APEH, the strategy to migrate to a new IT platform, and the description of proposed IT projects, such as Data Model of APEH, Modernisation of Tax Account System, etc., and - last but not least - our project, the (VIR1). This includes more than a traditional Executive Information System. 3. Selection of an Application Development Tool for the Proj ect: SAS To select an application development tool to the VIR1 project, requirements were: it should fit to the planned new IT platform: Open System Architecture, UNIX and RDBMS environment, client/server and terminal/server mode; it should be able to build data warehouse from the available heterogeneous data sources: Siemens, Clipper, DSM (Digital Standard MUMPS) systems; the system developed with, must be suitable for enquiries, analyses, and on the other hand, does not require specific or detailed IT skills from the users. 4. Project: Phase 1 (VIR1) 4.1. Objectives of the Project According to the Project Initiation Document, 2

5 VIR1 is an application software development project. It will create a system in its application environment in which data may be enquired, displayed, aggregated, connections and trends between data can be defined and which will meet primarily the management information requirements. Later the system may become the foundation of a comprehensive information system. An important aim of this phase is to form a standard environment and development technology, which may be the basis for further s, namely to form a standard development framework, quality assurance procedures, complying with SAS philosophy and guaranteeing compatibility with future developments; the trained SAS developers of the project team - analysts, programmers, software specialists - should obtain high level development skill and knowledge with the involvement of external experts working on the project Scope of the Project There were three modules to be developed in VIR1: the cash management module, using the results of the central cash management processes running on Siemens, VAX/VMS/FORTRAN, AXP/DSM, Clipper and Pascal platforms; an analytical module using the data of taxpayers who file monthly returns and provide approximately 80-85% of the tax revenues. This module will monitor the liabilities and cash management, as well arrears and give information for GDP projections, for the time being every month; a module to compare and analyse the VAT returns and their cash management figures, which will primarily match to the related liability and cash management data and will also give information about the aggregate refund claims and zero liabilities Benefits of the Project (1) Up-to-date information available on cash management at on-line terminals. (2) Information available monthly on the arrears and receipt of returns of large taxpayers. (3) Projections about the tax debts, or overpaid taxes of large taxpayers for the rest of the year, assumed increases or decreases of arrears, and the "threatened taxpayers" are maintained monthly. (4) Monitoring of VAT returns and related cash management weekly Technical Realisation As it is evident from the above description, the only solution to solve the problem to build a data warehouse based on the SAS Information Delivery System. First of all a powerful environment and tool kit was necessary, which made the development of the SAS applications controllable, homogeneous and convenient for a separate 3

6 development team too. The design, realisation, test and installation of different application modules require plenty of common and similar tasks and basic software supports. The answer to these requirements was the Frame System, developed at first, which contains a number of utilities, subsystems and conventions to support the development of different application modules. The Frame System contains four basic subsystem as follows. The Admin Subsystem provides : a centrally maintained and co-ordinated access control supervisor, assigning different access (login), read, write and developer rights for users and user groups to avoid unauthorised access and data manipulation ; event handling facility, which includes not only the recording of irregular or erroneous events, but the journaling of any significant performed or missed user action; a system-wide code definition maintenance utility ; interface for different data sources. The types and structures of the data to be received, to be checked and stored are controlled by the central data interface administration; utilities to process and aggregate the detailed data preparing them for the effective evaluation. The Report Subsystem helps the developers and the application users to define and generate predefined or ad hoc reports. It provides user-friendly interfaces, which ensure the report design, realisation, recording and reusing very convenient and clear action. The user can generate reports using the stored (regularly requested) report definition, has the possibility to make temporary modification on the mentioned report definitions and also able to create a report from scratch according his/her own conception. The Report definition/modification part provides well arranged windows to select or define the requested variables, statistics, output forms, titles and footnotes, the output form (table, bar chart, pie chart, map, etc.), the output device (Output window, file, printer, etc.), filter conditions, date and page number options, etc. These report definitions are stored in separated datasets belonging to the different application modules installed in the system. The generation of a report is reduced to two simple steps in this way : to a report selection and a start of production. The Project Subsystem manages the whole environment of the application. This includes : the necessary conventions to allocate and separate application libraries (program, codes, report definitions, input and aggregated data and so on); the version control of the subsystems; 4

7 the exact description and connection definition of the system components (stored in project dataset and maintained by authorised system supervisor); utilities to generate the defined datasets and indices required by the application system; utilities to perform migration (porting) activities between different platforms. The Drill Subsystem is a very powerful tool that provides the decision makers with up-to-date information. It is a flexible, effective realisation of the data-mining technique well known in executive information systems. According to the drill-down technique the subsystem provides "a journey among the data". The steps of data mining are directed by the predefined routers and the user selections. On each diagram the user can select any subset of data by clicking the appropriate part of the chart. The subsequent diagrams will only based on the selected subset of data. Thus started from a general level containing all data, the user can approach to the important information hidden in the details. The predefined routers (stored in catalogues) contain all information about the drill steps including the names of the category and analysis variables for each step, chart forms at each level, and report definitions, etc. But each of these parameters can be changed during data-mining at any level with a single user action. The advancement inside the data levels can be performed not only in the regular vertical way, but this subsystem makes it possible to amble along the horizontal direction as well as to change the displayed variables locally. A report is connected to each of the diagrams. These reports can present the data displayed on the diagram in numeric way arranged in a table (tabular) form and these reports can be printed out to provide hardcopy output. Completing the first stage - that is the Frame System -, the first three application modules mentioned above, were completed in very short time according to efficient support and useful tools of the SAS system and the development environment provided by the Frame System. This basic VIR1 operates according to the client/server model but for the sake of complexity, the possibility of downloading the required data and completely independent functioning (e.g. on a mobile LAPTOP computer) is also supported and selected by the user. The data processing method of the VIR1 System was planned according to the Data warehouse theory (see Figure 1: Logical structure of the VIR1 system). That is the collection and processing of the data is realised in the classical three level solution. At the first layer the different external data sources are accessed and the data are extracted and stored. Following a validation the consolidated, integrated secondary data are prepared for the subsequent transformation. The transformed, aggregated data are stored at the third level in the appropriate form required by the different aspects of the evaluation demands. All the actions performed at any level are supervised and supported by the Admin subsystem. This includes the interface utilities and updated data dictionary requested for the data access, the event recording and journaling facility, etc. 5

8 Figure 1. Logical structure of the VIR1 system System administration Access to data sources External data sources Data dictionary Extracted data Validation Event log System administration Data consolidated and integrated Archive Algoritms of trasformation Data transformation System administration Reports and Drill-down definitions Summarised datasets SAS WINDOW Reports,tables, charts SAS WINDOW Drill-down 6

9 Figure 2. Main module selection screen 5. Conclusions VIR1 project was intended to "finger exercises". Final aim of this sub-project is to build and set an information system over the APEH's DP level, supporting not only the executive level of APEH, but wide range of managers and specialists too. This work will run along parallel to other operations of TAMP. The planned tendencies are: Data access: The classic cumulated EIS information is not always sufficient even for APEH's executive level, it is necessary to access elementary level of data sometimes. VIR1 today can not offer this possibility, because the elementary level of data are stored today in data bases, which SAS can not communicate with (p.e. Digital Standard MUMPS). Solution is the migration process to the aimed new platform (Open System, RDBMS), running within the scope of TAMP. 7

10 Substitution of running information service processes from out-of-date environment to SAS, p.e. the already running sub-project Company Tax Modernisation, which replaces the process from Siemens/SESAM to OSF1/SAS. This trend can ensure that a wide range of managers within the tax administration area can use the evaluation/assessment functions of SAS. The implementation of a quicker information supply shall thus require much less labour. Covering new areas: Estimating final results of long-running data processes using the mathematical statistical tool of SAS. For instance, annual processing the data of some tax categories takes about two months, depending on the receipt of returns, but managers of APEH Results of the VIR1 - acquisition of SAS tools, development of an in-house standard environment and development technology on the basis of SAS, co-operating with other subprojects of TAMP - could form a basis for the development of a support system for the assessment and planning actions on the level of the Hungarian national economy, also demonstrating the various processes undertaken on the macro-economic level. Notes SAS is a registered tardemark of SAS Institute Inc. Brand and product names are registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective companies. Budapest II., Lajos u , H-1023 HUNGARY : : Fax: magyara@isys.kfki.hu 8