Re: [lp-ca-on] Proposed Proof of Concept Tax Calculation

[Greg Knittl]

I'm guessing that dealing with CRA is going to be a complex project. It 
will be administrative/political with limited or no coding involved.
The ideal tool is basically a shared todo list. It could include tasks 
like open freedom of information request, write to Minister, lobby MP. 
It might fit into the GitLab Issues  but it's not clear to me if there 
can be multiple people on an issue. I.e. a group of people might draft a 
letter to the minister for the group to review. It might be scheduled 
for mumble at a specific time - again not obvious if GitLab can handle that.

We can still advance on paper filing while we struggle with opening the 
CRA interfaces. That's going to require a design document. I guess that 
becomes one or more files in GitLab and a project of it's own in GitLab 
to allow branching and forking separately from the code - I haven't used 
GIT for a project so I don't know exactly how it would work.

Along with the design document is a proof of concept sample problem 
specs. Not sure if this could be combined with the paper filing design 
document.
I'm kind of assuming that it will be mostly 1 person for each proof of 
concept. A simple minded way of doing it would be for people to put the 
proof of concepts up on a file server of there choice and add the link 
to the Libre Planet wiki. I suppose people might want to start 
collaborating even at the proof of concept stage. That might translate 
into more projects on GitLab.

GitLab definitely looks like a good fit once there is a well defined 
coding project. And the netfile and CRA My Account components might be 
separate projects so it might be multiple projects.

It would definitely be best if somebody with more experience with GitLab 
set this up. Also I'm not sure how Libre Planet Ontario makes these kind 
of decisions.

Greg

On 16-06-05 02:12 PM, Rudolf wrote:
> At this point I would highly recommend creating a repository on Gitlabs
> (it's FSF approved yay): https://gitlab.com
>
> it would make it easier to keep track of various issues and discussions and
> for people to get some code examples into the repo
>
> -rudolf
>
> On Sun, Jun 5, 2016 at 12:26 PM Allan Zhang <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA512
> >
> > Greg, did you file your last request to the CRA under your name or on
> > behalf of LP-CA-ON?
> >
> >
> > - -------- Original Message --------
> > From: Greg Knittl <address@hidden>
> > Sent: June 5, 2016 12:20:22 PM EDT
> > To: Stephen Paul Weber <address@hidden>, Libreplanet Canada
> > Ontario <address@hidden>
> > Subject: Re: [lp-ca-on] Proposed Proof of Concept Tax Calculation
> >
> > Hi Stephen,
> >
> > http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/esrvc-srvce/tx/bsnss/crpnt/sftwr-eng.html
> > Testing time frames gives some idea of the schedule. The paper/PDF forms
> > are usually available around the beginning of January so I doubt the
> > developers get much of a jump on everyone else.
> > The limit of 20 returns per computer could be interesting - I'm fine
> > with coding that but we have to give the user access to the source to
> > change it so I can see the CRA using this as an excuse to deny free
> > software solutions... We may have to start with paper filing while we
> > fight the battles to open up the CRA's interfaces.
> >
> > Yes, the constant changes to the calculations are why my intuition is
> > that the tax calculations have to be externalized as some kind of
> > formula language so the changes can be crowd sourced. Perhaps it could
> > be Prolog statements that get compiled into a Prolog program. It could
> > also be R, bash, some spreadsheet formula language, I don't have strong
> > opinion yet. There needs to be a way for people to contribute back
> > partial updates to those portions of the logic they use, which might
> > only be a subset of the calculations on a form - github? At some point
> > would have to take a branch and try and certify it...
> >
> > My feeling is that if we can get crowdsourcing the tax calculations to
> > work we have a good chance of displacing the commercial software. We
> > might not conquer the mass market first but if we can get accountants
> > with more complex calculations to start contributing perhaps we could
> > become the reference implementation and there would be pressure on the
> > CRA to accommodate us. /end daydream.
> >
> > We can't be the first to struggle with these issues. I wonder what our
> > friends in the States are doing... Anyone care to contact Libre Planet US?
> >
> > Greg
> >
> >
> > On 16-06-05 11:09 AM, Stephen Paul Weber wrote:
> > > Of course the biggest hurdle for the tax *calculation* part is that it
> > changes every year and so needs constant updating to be useful.
> > > I wonder if authorised vendors get access to the forms ahead of time in
> > order to have the software ready by tax time...‎
> > >
> >
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