API Spotlight: Harnessing the power of Tax Transfer APIs

Automatically move data into and out of a tax return

Shahbaz Khan:

Rod, before we start, could you maybe just introduce yourself and give us a bit of background on your role as a senior technical product manager for our APIs?

Rod Lear: 

Sure, so I've been with Wolters Kluwer for 20 plus years, 10 of those years directly involving support, consulting, and as my current job, product manager for the APIs for the CCH Axcess Suite. So I guide the overall CCH Axcess API experience. I also work with our internal product teams as they're looking to develop new APIs to make sure that we are developing APIs that meet the customers’ expectations and we can deliver high quality APIs into the market.

Could you tell our listeners a little bit about the Tax Transfer API? What is it and what does it enable?

Sure. So the Tax Transfer API has been around for 10 years, almost since the beginning of CCH Axcess. It is an API that enables firms and users that want to import data into their tax returns to push data in from an XML file into any of the inputs that they would have normally keyed in data within the user interface. It supports all of the return types. It supports all of the fed, state, and city tax authorities. 

In addition to the import side of things, we also allow the export of data. So that export of data is not just the inputs that you would be pushing in with the import functionality, but you're also able to grab the government form data from the fed, states, and cities, including some of the white paper statements and the background forms and calculations that you see in your government views within the user interface. This is probably the most valuable piece from the overall tax APIs that we provide.

Use cases for API automations in tax workflows

I can see that being able to automatically move data in and out of the tax return could be very valuable. But could you give us some examples of use cases and what firms have done specifically with this API?

Yeah, so starting from the import side of things, there's a lot of different use cases that people have done, but really there's kind of three main ones that a lot of firms have focused on. The first one is dealing with what I would call organizer import. So a lot of firms have their homegrown work papers in Excel, and they've taken that data that they've keyed into that work paper and they're importing that directly into CCH Axcess Tax so that they don't have to touch that data two and three times.

So it's going to reduce the errors and increase the quality of data that's going to get in the return. They're also doing a very similar work paper when you're looking at K1s and trying to manage large number of K1s. And so as they aggregate data across Excel work papers and those K1s, they can just push that data into the return. 

And then the last piece is going to be working with the 990, the exempt org returns. A lot of higher end processing firms that do a lot of those returns have created master templates that they can gather that data and push it in. 

From an export side, you can look at it from both an automated review and an analytics [function]. A lot of those people with work papers, once they start importing that data, will actually pull that data back out and do a comparison between what was imported and what's the post-calculation number to see if those expected amounts are matching what they would want. And that reduces them having to go in and review some of the specific areas of that return post -entry. 

From an analytic side, then you really get into the ability to start understanding your return demographics. We have some functionality that can do some analytics with our DataScan product, but Tax Transfer allows you to export a lot more information from the returns and pull that information, combine it with other information you might have in a data lake to run richer demographic data.

So really from those cross return type analytics and all of that is really where the Tax Transfer APIs are starting to really see their value, especially as we get into the age of AI and leveraging more of the tax APIs.

So we obviously offer more APIs than just the Tax Transfer API. Could you talk a little bit about which other APIs are part of the core Tax API suite at Wolters Kluwer for CCH Axcess Tax?

That core Tax suite really has three other areas of APIs that provide a lot of value. The first one is looking at your eFile status data, being able to pull that data down and pull it into Workflow and other reporting systems. In addition to just the general status data that you'd be pulling down, you can also get the details of your rejections and schema errors that you can then automate pushing that directly to the preparer so they're not having to go to the eFile status website to look at that information. 

We have the return list where a lot of firms are pulling down those returns to keep track of how many versions of returns they have, what returns are out there, and just kind of tracking what number of returns are present. And we have a lot of other administrative APIs around either looking up information, or controlling whether return is prohibited for changes. Or if it's in use when you're trying to use an API, there's an API that will let you unlock that return if a user's not in it, so that you can continue your API processing without having to involve users in that workflow to kind of solve that issue. So that's really where we kind of sit with our core Tax APIs today.

Using the Advanced Tax APIs:Print, eFile release/upload, and roll-forward

Now outside of the core Tax APIs, there's the more advanced APIs that come with CCH Axcess. Could you touch on those a little bit?

Correct, so probably the biggest one, and the one that's most used is our Print API. So this mimics our batch print functionality. Firms can submit batch print jobs in the background and use our print set functionality to print multiple copies of that, rearrange pages as they want, and it really take a lot of that print processing that they may be doing manually today and automates it in the background.

Two other APIs that we have that are a little bit lesser used are going to be our eFile Release and Upload API that lets you automate that process of uploading and releasing returns automatically. Now that one's not used as much because there's some more processes that firms may need on their side to support that and control that properly. But there are some firms doing some very interesting things in that area. 

And last but not least is the Roll Forward API. So it's a smaller use case, but for a lot of firms that have their own internal workflow systems, this lets them automate the ability to roll over those APIs just in time as they need to and not have an admin sit there and have to roll forward a bunch of returns through Batch Manager.

How to get started with CCH Axcess Tax APIs

It seems like there's a kind of wide breadth of API offerings as it relates to CCH Axcess Tax, but if a firm wants to leverage these APIs, whether the Tax API kit or these advanced ones you mentioned around printing or automatically eFiling your return, where should a firm start?

You know, that's a great question. I've worked with customers, going on 10 years now on that very question. The first thing that I start with any firm is mapping your processes and making sure that you have standardized processes. A lot of firms are interested in automation, but when they actually go look at how many different processes or how many variations of a process they would have to support from a programmatic standpoint, it becomes way too much for them to try to consume. 

The more that you can standardize, the better you're going to be at trying to automate anything, whether it's with APIs or through other methods. When it does come to APIs, programmers are going to be required. It's just the normal aspect of APIs. It's not something that's easily going to be done with a lot of scripting or something like that. You really do need a full stack programmer.

And so that's where you’ll have to have either in-house development resources within your firm or go with an outside consultant. Now for an outside consultant, you have a lot of different options. We have our professional services team here at Wolters Kluwer that can help out. We have third party consultants that are part of our API marketplace. Or there may be other outside API programmers from an API perspective that can come in and assist you.

But any way you go, you are going to want a full set of developers. And it may be for some firms that they can start small and just pay a consultant to do something. But there's a lot of firms that have started that way that have actually spun up their own development teams to take that on. And this is something that I've talked about at user conferences before. And this is something that we'll definitely be covering in our user conference material going forward around the APIs, because this is an area of a lot of interest for people.

Rod, thank you for all that insight and I'm sure it'll be a very engaging session. Join us next time as we sit down with a Top 100 accounting firm to hear about how they use the Tax Transfer API to really automate their tax preparation process.