Federation of Tax Administrators
| service type | Other |
| country | United States |
| government type | state |
| license | unknown |
| website | https://taxadmin.org/ |
Description
The Federation of Tax Administrators (FTA) was organized in 1937 to improve the quality of state tax administration by providing services to state tax authorities and administrators. These services include research and information exchange, training, and intergovernmental and interstate coordination. The Federation also represents the interests of state tax administrators before federal policymakers where appropriate. They are the only experts in the U.S. in data sourcing and data sharing for revenue and taxation.
In recent years, most of these efforts have involved assisting states in applying emerging technologies to tax administration as well as to simplify the administration of current taxes on a multistate basis.
Activities in this area include promoting uniformity in the administration of motor fuel taxation, leading national efforts to develop standard formats and procedures to facilitate the filing of state tax returns and remittances using electronic means, coordinating the joint electronic filing of state and federal individual income tax returns and working with states and taxpayers to assess the impact of new business processes on tax administration.
FTA facilitates a lot of state-to-state transfer of software. A lot of FTA’s standards piggyback on federal standards. Their standards practice is a very small version of IEEE and xML based tax filing standards.
The work of FTA is directed and governed by an eighteen-member Board of Trustees composed of tax administrators representing all regions of the country. The Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service is an ex-officio board member. The FTA staff consists of 10 full-time positions, headed by an Executive Director appointed by the Board of Trustees.
FTA is financed primarily from annual dues assessed to member tax agencies. Other sources of revenue include the sale of publications to non-members and proceeds from conferences and workshops. FTA is organized as a nonprofit corporation under § 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.