In 1999, the government of British Columbia was looking for a product that would straighten out its maze of complicated, computerized tax programs.

At the same time, James Harrison and the partners of Boise-based Fast Enterprises were seeking a first buyer for their invention, GenTax, an enterprise business application specifically designed for government revenue and taxation departments.

The two parties eventually met at a conference and soon the government of B.C. became the first to install GenTax. A year later, the government of the State of Idaho became the second. GenTax is now also utilized by the states of Georgia, Louisiana, New Mexico, Montana, and Arizona.

“We came up with an idea for a ‘canned’ solution to government tax problems,” said Harrison. “We were prepared to give them something that was already built, rather than going to the agencies and saying, ’what is it you want?’ and then building it for them.”

GenTax was the first-of-its-kind COTS (Commercial, Off-the-Shelf) software. Fast Enterprises formed in 1997 to market the product. GenTax’s advantage, Harrison said, is its simplicity and cost effectiveness.

“The systems our clients were working with were complicated and expensive,” he said. “We were convinced if we could build a better mousetrap, there would be a demand there.”

One significant pleased client is the Idaho State Tax Commission.

“What we liked about GenTax was that all the base functionality needed by any revenue department was already programmed in the software,” said Steve Wilson, the commission’s information services manager. “All we as a state did was ’configuration’ within the software to reflect our particular tax laws, rather than programming something from the ground up.”

The prior system used by the state was a classic “Legacy” system, meaning that it was mainframe-based and designed using the technology of the ’70s, said Wilson. The system required staff to go to multiple locations to find data they needed; and programming changes took months, even years.

GenTax is an integrated system, said Wilson, meaning STC staff can look up a taxpayer and see all tax types and activities associated with that taxpayer.

“That not only means greater efficiency for our staff,” Wilson said, “but better services for taxpayers when they call or come into our offices. We can find what we need on the system quickly.”

A prime example of GenTax’s advantage for Idaho was the quagmire STC avoided following passage of the extra one cent sales tax by the Legislature a couple of years ago.

“It was passed late in the longest session of the Legislature,” said Wilson. “Bottom line, we only had days from the time the governor signed the bill to the time it went into effect.” The Tax Commission had done its homework and anticipated a rate change, but couldn’t do all the configuration until the legislation was passed and signed.

“There is no way we’d have been able to react that quickly under the old Legacy system,” Wilson said.

Harrison is the only Fast Enterprises partner to reside in Boise. According to Business Development Specialist Jake Hoffman, though, most of the administrative functions for the company are based here.

“Our business model is to place staff where the work is. Many of our 75 employees are from the Boise area. Rather than flying them to job sites on Monday and home on Friday, we help place them and their families in the communities in which they work.”

The partners are a diverse group and include Dennis Manalo and Jennifer Tuvell of Helena, Mont.; and Managing Partner Martin Ranklin, David Pearson, and Gary Nichol of Baton Rouge, La.

Harrison, who hails from California and is a former Anderson Consulting employee, said he met all six partners over the course of several years while working on tax projects in such diverse locales as New Zealand, Singapore, and Iowa.

All have considerable experience in both technology and tax administration. Harrison, 41, holds degrees in math and computer science from the University of San Francisco.

The name for their product “grew from the realization, based on experience, that the raw mechanics of collecting, processing, and accounting for revenue was generic (the ‘gen’ in GenTax),” said Hoffman.

Harrison and the other partners have created two companion products: Taxpayer Access Point, which allows taxpayers to access and monitor their own tax accounts via the Internet; and Discovery, used to merge and compare known tax data with demographic data for the purpose of “discovering” possible non-filers and under-reporters.

“Many of the other states and provinces using GenTax today made their decision based in some measure on its success at the Idaho State Tax Commission,” said Hoffman.

The small company and the small state have been a good match. Not only did Idaho circumvent the big price tag that comes with working with large corporations like IBM, it also saved time.

When Idaho was seeking to modernize its tax processing systems and decided to go with GenTax after the success of the British Columbia model, “we came in 500K under budget (returned to the state treasury) and three months ahead of schedule,” said Wilson.