I. Welcome and Introductions

Will Rice and Gerald Johnson, the co-chairs of the Wireless Task Group welcomed the participants to the teleconference. The following persons participated in the teleconference:

Gerald Johnson - FL Co-Chair

Will Rice - WA Co-Chair

Joan Serfling - SD

Terry Garber - SC

Ken Lovett - IL

Melissa Lewis - CA

Dave Zanone - MO

Dan Hurst - MO

Randy Dryden - MBIA

Elliott Dubin - MTC

Jonathan Lyon - FTA

II. Public Comment

Randy Dryden, MBIA MuniServices raised the question of whether the State of California would be responsible for providing the database for wireless service providers because there is no statewide telecommunications tax on wireless calls. In California, 162 local jurisdictions impose telecommunications taxes on wireless service. The state participants agreed that a state could, if it wished, provide a database in the approved format, even if there is no statewide tax. Similarly, the cities could, as a group, contract with private firms to establish the database &endash; provided the database is in the approved format.

III. Approval of Minutes of December 14, 2001 Teleconference

The minutes were approved unanimously.

IV. Discussion of Changes to Transaction Set 158 in Preparation for February 2002 Meeting of ASC X12

Terry Garber explained some of the changes that were requested by ASC at their December meeting. The proposed changes included adding new code values for the transaction set identifier (143); tax jurisdiction sourcing (158) (TJ); tax jurisdiction code qualifier (955); functional identifier code (479); State (ST); address component qualifier (1106); and type of taxing authority codes (1721). Additional data elements were proposed for: address component qualifier, address information, and county designator, A full description of the proposed changes can be found on the following website http://www.taxadmin.org/fta/edi/wireless.html .

Other Discussion

A question was raised concerning the sending of multiple addresses and only one is found &endash; how is that handled. Terry replied that was something she had not considered, and this might require the additional segment that we were trying to avoid adding.

Another question was raised regarding whether the database needed to keep track of the date of address and rate changes on a historical basis? The consensus of the group seemed to be that this was not necessary since the entire database would be refreshed on a periodic basis. It was then asked if we need to run addresses back through the database when local rates change? Terry replied that the current work effort involves creating a uniform format for a database which the states will create, if they wish. The database returns only the jurisdiction(s) associated with the address, not the local tax rate. The state is responsible for tying its jurisdictional "database" to the appropriate tax rate table(s).

V. Special District Designation

Terry reported that Taxware was interested in submitting their Special Tax District data set to ANSI as Vertex had done, but it appears to be too late for them to make the Spring meeting. In the interim their data set could be used as a "vendor defined" data set until it is approved.

VI. Review of Task Group Time Line January 2002 to July 2002

Terry expressed some concern that we might have trouble getting the 97% vote required for approval, since some of the members might not fully understand what we were trying to do. [Ed. Note: During last week's meeting of the American National Standards Institute's committee responsible for business data interchange (also known as ASC X12), a new tax jurisdiction sourcing transaction set (TS158) draft standard was processed for submission to ballot approval of X12 members.] Will asked when we would know the results of the votes, and Terry responded that we should know by late April or early May. [Ed. Note: in addition to approving the transaction set through the X12 process, FTA and MTC, respectively, would need to approve the database format. The MTC Executive Committee, at its Winter meeting in San Diego, has approved the time line for obtaining MTC approval]

VII. Future Meetings

Will decided that we would not schedule another conference call until we knew more about what transpired at the February meeting. At that time we will schedule a meeting, if necessary.

VIII. Adjournment

Meeting was adjourned at approximately 3:50 PM EST.