[Advacs-discuss] International flavours.

[Oliver Elphick]

On Wed, 2004-08-11 at 07:40, David Palmer wrote:
> Perhaps in this way the different international packages could be 
> defined for downloading.
> Other countries have their own particular quirks, e.g., G.S.T., goods 
> and services tax. The VAT module may well only need renaming for that 
> purpose.

VAT has extra features that might get in the way.  A simple sales tax
could probably be rolled up into a country-specific package to include
other items.  My plan is to provide hooks to let routines be called by
indirection in a country-specific package.  It might well be that one
country's package could be adopted almost without change for another
country, but that has to be determined by nationals of that country.

> I note in the project description that the aim is to meet international 
> accounting standards, but does this provide the necessary compliance 
> requirements for acceptance by the multitude of national tax departments 
> for their respective endorsements?

Again, that is something that needs input from nationals of individual
countries.  In any case, I doubt that the IAS requirements will impct on
the core packages, which are the ones everyone will need first.  In
Britain, the level of compliance depends on the size and the legal
status of the enterprise.  The tax rules are different from the company
reporting rules, too.  However, I don't at present intend this package
to put accountants out of business!  That would take a vast amount of
work, which would probably be misdirected effort.

> Just my take, but I think that this would be the fastest way to gain 
> market acceptance if these respective tax departments were to list the 
> future Advacs package as approved goods, as this is generally the first 
> place accountants look when determining their software requirements.
> I have already emailed the Australian tax dept. re their compliance 
> requirements, but perhaps a little further research might pay dividends 
> with regard to acceptance within the U.S. and other markets?

I would be pleased to receive input about this.  We cannot hope to
handle every nuance of every country's regulations, but it helps to be
aware of pitfalls at this stage of the design.

Fortunately, the basic modules are going to be fairly standard for any
country.  I can't really imagine that the General Ledger is going to be
much affected by national requirements.  
-- 
Oliver Elphick                                          olly@lfix.co.uk
Isle of Wight                              http://www.lfix.co.uk/oliver
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