RI Division of Taxation Computer system changeover successfully completed

Taxes, fees now maintained and accessed on single, agency-wide system

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – The Rhode Island Division of Taxation has successfully implemented the
third phase of its changeover to a new agency-wide computer system.

During this phase of the changeover, which began November 7, services were limited.
However, the changeover was completed yesterday and, as a result, the Division resumed all
services in full this morning. All services are now in full operation.

Before the overall computer conversion project began, the more than 50 tax types and fees
administered by the Division were kept in a variety of places, including Access databases,
computer spreadsheets, and a mainframe computer which uses 1970s-era COBOL language.

With the third phase of the project now complete, Division of Taxation personnel now maintain
and access substantially all tax types and fees on a single, agency-wide computer system,
known as an integrated tax system.

“We appreciate the patience of taxpayers, tax professionals, and many other Division
stakeholders as this latest annual phase of the project was implemented,” said Acting Tax
Administrator Neena S. Savage. “My thanks, as well, to all Division of Taxation employees for
their team work on this important project. I also appreciate the work performed by Revenue
Solutions Inc. (RSI), our technology partner in this venture,” she said.

“We are moving to a new system that will eventually save everyone time and give taxpayers and
tax professionals more tools and improved online access,” Savage said. “To get to that point,
we must change over the old system to the new system. But to keep disruption to a minimum,
we are doing the changeover gradually, in stages over time,” she said.

The first phase of the changeover was completed in July 2014. The second phase was
completed in November 2015. The third phase took place from November 7, 2016, through
November 14, 2016. In each phase, multiple tax types were migrated over to the new computer
system. This month’s migration, for example, included the corporate income tax, sales and use tax, and withholding. Future plans include migrating estate tax records over to the new system;
moving the revenue accounting system onto the new system; and constructing a taxpayer
portal, which would, among other things, let taxpayers log in and manage their accounts, grant
online access to tax professionals, make payments, and check balances.