Tax Interface System 

Purpose

SAP provides a tax interface system that is capable of passing required data to an external tax system which determines tax jurisdictions, calculates taxes and then returns these calculated results back to SAP. This occurs during master data address maintenance to retrieve the appropriate tax jurisdiction code and during order and invoice processing in FI, MM, and SD to retrieve tax rates and tax amounts. The tax interface system also updates the third party’s software files with the appropriate tax information for legal reporting purposes.

Implementation Considerations

In order for the tax interface system to work with an external tax package, the third party software package and the appropriate version of SAP’s certified tax partner’s API (Application Programming Interface) must be installed at the customer site.

After the installation, you must establish communication between the SAP system and the external tax package. Communication between the SAP system and the third party tax package is established using SAP RFC (Remote Function Call) and SAP tRFC (Transactional RFC). Although the configuration within SAP in setting up the RFC call may seem straight forward, difficulties in getting the communication to work during initial setup often arise. It is therefore recommended that the customer have an experienced Basis person to assist with this initial setup.

Features

For SAP’s Release 3.0B to 4.5B, the tax interface system unit of communication with the external tax system is a line item. This method is called Tax Per Item.

From SAP’s Release 4.6A and later, the tax interface system unit of communication is a document. This method is called Tax Per Document.

The main new features of the tax interface system for Release 4.6 are:

·       Maximum Tax Per Document handling capability

·       New communication structures with the external tax system:

- Separate structures for header, item and jurisdiction level

- Strict distinction between input and output fields

·       SAP tax data is no longer incomplete when forced update to the external audit file

·       Real-time update of the external system tax audit file (ultimate usability of the update programs is a deleted update program)

·       Version Management: monitoring the current external tax system API version being used

Constraints

SAP is under no obligation to install third party software, or their corresponding certified API. This is the full responsibility of the third party software vendor. If during the installation of the third party’s API, problems have been detected with SAP’s RFC libraries, these problems should be directed to and resolved by SAP. SAP will assist customers with communication setup and testing from within SAP as well as application configuration upon customer request. This will only be done after the third party’s standard software, as well as their software needed to communicate with SAP has been properly installed and tested.  Any problems customers have with installing third party software should be directed to and resolved by the appropriate software vendor.

SAP is under no obligation to provide consulting, setup, or maintenance of a third party software package.  If customers have post installation questions, problems, or maintenance issues which pertain specifically to the third party’s software package, then these questions should be directed to and resolved by the appropriate software vendor.

SAP is also under no obligation to provide post implementation consulting for third party software packages.