The Tax Performance System (TPS) is mandated by the US Department of Labor (USDOL) to:
•Measure the quality of the State Unemployment Insurance tax operations. Quality is measured in terms of accuracy, timeliness and in some cases, completeness.
•Assist State Administrator in improving tax systems.
•Aid in carrying out Federal oversight and provide technical assistance.
DEW will use the SUITS system to evaluate TPS standards and then submitting the findings to the USDOL. As each sample is finalized and submitted, a file is generated for record keeping; however, it is still the responsibility of the DEW user to manually enter the submitted samples into the SUN system.
The process begins with the creation of the TPS Work Plan in SUITS. Here, Staff will enter the random number for acceptance samples provided by the USDOL for the report year and universe. Staff will also enter the Date Universe Built and Sample Pull Date. The date the universe is built is the day Staff is telling SUITS to create the universe for each TPS sample area. The Sample Pull Date is the date the batches will run in order to create the samples from each TPS universe for review. Once the information is entered in the table, the Work Plan is submitted.
The next step in the process is the running of the batch jobs. The batch jobs are run on a schedule by the SUITS system and do not require Staff interaction. The A1 (First) Acceptance Samples will remain in ‘Not Generated’ status until the batch job has completed its run. However, after the batch run is completed, they will be ‘In Review’ and can be worked on by the TPS auditor.
With the exception of Cashiering, each Acceptance Sample Report consists of a number of cases made up of an employer which meets the criteria for the associated universe, and a set of questions which determine whether the appropriate actions were taken on the account. A Staff will open each case by selecting the Case ID and review/answer the sample questions via a wizard. The Staff is also provided a hyperlink to the Employer Account associated with the selected TPS case. This allows the Staff to quickly access the associated employer in order to review relevant data for the sample questionnaire. The questionnaire for each TPS universe is different, and the questions within are either Evaluative or Non-Evaluative based on USDOL guidelines. After the sample questions have been answered, the wizard can be completed by clicking the ‘Finish’ button. The SUITS system will determine whether that individual case passes or fails based on the answers to the evaluative questions. The overall status to the sample report is tied to the number of cases that fail. This is based on Sample size, but in general, if more than 2 cases fail in a sample report, the entire report status will be updated to ‘Failed.’
The TPS Cashiering review is processed a little differently in the sense that there is not a system generated Cashiering Universe or Sample. Instead, the Staff builds the Cashiering sample manually by gathering a set of non-electronic payments (checks) which have been mailed to the agency. The sampling interval is based on DOL guidelines, and the SUITS system will not affect the current sampling procedure. The sample size and pass/fail determination are based on the percentage of electronic versus non-electronic payments for the year. The goal of the TPS Cashiering review is to demonstrate that the agency is able to process most payments within 3 or less days after receiving the payment. Staff will gather the payments, enter the received date and the posting date, and the system determines both the number of days to deposit, as well as the pass/fail status of the sample based on USDOL guidelines.
After the sample report process is completed, SUITS creates a file for each of the submitted Samples and stores that data for use with USDOL. The Staff can then enter the TPS Sample data in the USDOL SUN system.