(This page slightly updated for transmission of 2016 healthcare information in processing year 2017.)
(Some more changes has been made for 2017 healthcare tax year / processing year 2018, but not on this page. Watch for notes indicating changes.)
There's a couple of things you are going to need so you may as well gather them now:
- Download the schemas and crosswalks from the IRS AIR Program site (the site for sending your data via the UI channel). When you unzip the schemas, make sure you save the unzipped files at the highest level you can on your desktop/laptop. Don't bury the files under multiple nesting folders. The file names are so long that at some point with the long directory path, you can't open or save them. Also, when you unzip the schemas, unzip them in the same order as they came in. This is critical. So you should end up with 3 folders (COMMON, EXT, and MSG), each of which contains various XML and XSD files, and, for processing year 2016 only, outside of those three folders, an XML file called "IRS-Form 1094-1095CTransmitterUpstreamMessage. So keep the same layout as in the zipped folder.
- Download XML Notepad 2007. This is what you will use to test your final XML files. You can probably Google it.
- Check to see if you have powershell. All you have to do is start at the Start button and type "powershell" in the Search bar. With this powershell, you can generate your unique UUID needed for your Manifest header file (more details on this later on), but it is not a showstopper if you do not have powershell. You can Google for UUID as there are various sites for this. Also, I will have to check my notes but I think you can create a UUID from the black "cmd" area.
And that's all that I can think of for right now.
Next is probably the part that is stopping you: actually converting your Excel data into XML.