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The eFileReady API is based on a Multi-API system for providing the API. The API generally consist of 2 aspects :
A - API Services
eFileReady provides a range of e-filing services to HMRC, Companies House and others. You can choose any particular service you wish to use and the respective API documents will be provided.
A1 - CIS E-Filing Services
- CIS 300 : This is the monthly return made by Contractors containing details of all payments made to their subcontractors, regardless of their tax treatment.
- CIS Verification : This e-filing is the process of checking if the Subcontractor has registered under CIS and what is their HMRC Tax status, to determine the rate of deduction.
A2 - RTI E-Filing Services :
- FPS (Full Payment Submission) : This is the return made by Employers to tell HMRC about payments and deductions made to their Employees in Real-time.
- Rectification FPS : Apart from the regular FPS in real-time, the Additional FPS and YTD (Year-to-date) FPS are also supported for rectification purposes for Employers.
- EPS (Employer Payment Summary) : This is for Employers to report Statutory Payments, Employment Allowance, CIS Deductions Reclaim, Apprenticeship Levy payments, 'No Payments' , 'Inactivity Periods'.
- Amended EPS : This is for reporting EPS changes or corrections of previous tax years for Employers.
- NVR (NINO Verification Request) : This is a verification request for Employers to check if the NINO used for an Employee is correct, or to obtain a correct NINO for an Employee.
A3 - VAT E-Filing Services :
- MTD VAT (Making Tax Digital VAT) : This is the return for VAT-registered Businesses, which also requires them to follow the "MTD" rules of keeping records digitally.
B - API Technology
The service API covers a wide range of API technologies. It supports XML, JSON data format and runs on top of REST API. The data format mainly depends on which data formats HMRC, Companies House and other target providers accept.
B1 - Authorisation and Engagement Protocol
The eFileReady engagement protocol is based on commonly used industry-standard open source OAuth 2.0 (Open Authorisation) specifications for establishing the identity of our API Partners and providing consented access. It restricts actions of what the Partner software can perform on resources on behalf of the User, without sharing the User's credentials.
OAuth 2.0 is a means of granting access to a set of resources, for example, remote APIs or User’s data. At the most basic level, before OAuth 2.0 can be used, the Partner must acquire its own credentials, a Client id and Client secret. Further, the Partner initiates the request for Access Token, along with other details.
Primarily, OAuth 2.0 uses Access Tokens which is a piece of data that represents the Authorisation to access resources on behalf of the end-user. Once the Partner software acquires the Access Token, then it can access the Resource i.e API.
B2 - Service API
- XML (EXtensible Markup Language): is a markup language to create a simple text-based format for representing structured information. The text-based data format is standardised using XML Schema i.e the syntax or grammar for the XML. The XML data is considered to be valid, when the XML conforms to the corresponding XML Schema specification.
- JSON (JavaScript Object Notation): is a lightweight data-interchange format. JSON is faster than XML since it is leaner than XML. JSON is best suited for simple data structures, whereas XML is suited for defining complex data structures.
- REST (REpresentational State Transfer) API: is a software architectural style that defines the set of rules to be used for creating API (Application Programming Interface) or Web services. It allows systems to request for access and manipulate Web resources by using a uniform and predefined set of rules. In general, interactions in REST API happen securely over the Internet using HTTPS (HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure)