Release 1677 addresses two citizenship issues.

1.  Due to a change in the tax treaty between the United States and Japan,
"Effective January 1, 2006 nonresidents from Japan are no longer allowed to
claim Federal withholding allowances for their spouses or
dependents."  Implementation of this change has two parts.  One is changes
to editing so that a country code of 'JA' is no longer allowed in
conjunction with citizenship status code 'A' but it is with 'N'.  The other
part is a one-time program, PPOT1677, that will update citizenship status
code in the EDB from 'A' to 'N' for employees with country of residence
'JA', and if those employees have more than one withholding allowance
(spouses or dependents are included), it will be changed to one (employee
only).  We plan to generate a PPP180 audit report for you to show which
employees are updated.

2.  'E3' (nationals of Australia, their spouses, and children) will be
added as a new visa type.  It is also noted in the release letter that
there were some inconsistencies between entries in the code translation
table, CICS Help, and the Data Dictionary, thus some clean-up was needed.

TABLE UPDATES
   Transactions are provided with which to update:
- message table
- code translation table

IMPLEMENTATION
   R1677 is date-mandated to occur at a very precise point in time: after
the final compute paying in 2005 and before the first compute paying in
2006.  Additionally, the Base Payroll Year-end Sequence document shows it
happening after calendar year periodic maintenance.  This is similar to the
requirement for r1672 except that the program code for r1677 can not be
installed ahead of time as for r1672.  Instead, the complete installation
of r1677 plus the job to run the one-time program, must be performed in
what is a very narrow window for some sites.

- For Davis, I propose installing on the night of 12/20,
   before the MO compute
- For San Diego, I propose installing on the night of 12/22,
   before the MO compute
- Other sites have more room for maneuvering, but in general,
   installation must occur before MO and S2 computes.
   Riverside and Hastings have no December computes paying
   in 2005, therefore the release can be installed for them as soon
   as testing is complete and calendar year periodic maintenance
   has been performed.

Ok to install?  Any concerns about timing?

   bvb