Configuring Tax Balance

Owned by CBE
Last updated: Jun 18, 2024 by Sebastian Wellsandt
2 min read

Requirements

Tax Balance requires the Portal application at least for authentication purposes. See section Portal application for more details.

The configuration will refer to <your-portal-url> with the URL that you host your Portal application on and <your-taxbalance-url> with the URL that you host the Tax Balance Server on.

Activate Tax Balance license

Open the Portal Web Application located at <your-portal-url>.

  1. Select Administration → Activations from the main navigation

  2. Enter Key that was provided by AMANA 

  3. Click Add activation

Register Tax Balance as a module

Open the Portal Web Application located at <your-portal-url>.

  1. Select Administration → Modules from the main navigation and click Create

  2. Select Module name Tax Balance

  3. Set Root URL to <your-taxbalance-url>

  4. Set Login URL to <your-taxbalance-url>

  5. Set Api URL to <your-taxbalance-url>/api

  6. Select Id token JWS algorithm RS265

  7. Click Save and remember the Client ID and Secret for later configuration steps

Tax Balance configuration

Perform the following configuration instructions on the machine that hosts the Tax Balance Server.

Edit the appsettings.json file in the physical directory of the Tax Balance Server application:

  1. Set "Authentication" > "OAuth" > "AuthorizationEndpoint" to <your-portal-url>/login

  2. Set "Authentication" > "OAuth" > "ClientId" to the Client ID from the previous registration process

  3. Set "Authentication" > "OAuth" > "ClientSecret" to the Secret from the previous registration process

  4. Set "Authentication" > "OAuth" > "TokenEndpoint" to <your-portal-url>/api/auth/token

  5. Set "Authentication" > "JwtBearer" > "Authority" to <your-portal-url>

  6. Set "Authentication" > "JwtBearer" > "ClaimsIssuer" to <your-portal-url>

  7. Set "ConnectionsStrings" > "SmartTaxBalanceDatabase" to a valid connection string
    e.g. Server=<your-database-server>;Database=taxbalance;Trusted_Connection=True;TrustServerCertificate=True;Encrypt=True
    Trusted_Connection, TrustServerCertificate and Encrypt must meet the requirements of the SQL Server. Be aware that setting Trusted_Connection  to True will enforce Integrated Security to True. Therefore, it is not possible to use User Id and Password in this case. See SQL Server Database for more details.

  8. Set "CORS" > "Origins" to ["<your-portal-url>", "<your-taxbalance-url>"] 

  9. Starting with Version 23.0.148:
    Set "GlobalTaxCenterSuite" > "ApiKeys" > “TaxDataHub” to a valid API Key provided by Tax Data Hub

Retrieve the API key from the Tax Data Hub log files. Tax Data Hub will generate an API key on first start and will output it only once. See Communication with other GTC Suite modules for further information.

  1. Starting with Version 24.1.28:
    In "ResponseHeaders" > "Everywhere" > "Headers" there is an entry "connect-src ‘self’ https://localhost:8443;". Replace the url with <your-portal-url> without the /portal url segment (The default is https://localhost:8443 for the portal url https://localhost:8443/portal).

XBRL taxonomy functionality

Tax Balance heavily relies on the so called XBRL taxonomies provided by "XBRL Deutschland e.V.".

Please perform the following steps to properly configure the required XBRL cache:

  • XBRL cache folder is configured in appsettings.json (located in the application directory) by setting the XbrlFileCachePath property. The default setting is C:\temp\ 

  • Download and extract this ZIP archive to the preceding location. Make sure that the target folder is empty before extraction.

  • You may want to change the location of the cache folder

Ensure that the IIS AppPool user, e.g. "IIS AppPool\<name of application pool>" has permission to read and write to the above mentioned XBRL file cache path.

Tax Balance Server must be restarted each time a change to the XBRL file cache has been made.

Learn more