There are several problems with how IDEA is reacting to this problem:
1) It does not like the '$' in <tei-class> declaration.
2) If I remove '$' from declaration and change it to <tei-class>test.SampleTag.VarExtraInfo</tei-class> then it still does not recognize the variables in JSP code (also, such declaration does not work in jboss 4.0.2)

Below are the samples from JSP page and Java JSP tag variable declarations.


Here is a copy of how we declare custom tags in our 'tld' file:
----
<tag>
<name>sampletag</name>
<tag-class>test.SampleTag</tag-class>
<tei-class>test.SampleTag$VarExtraInfo</tei-class>
<body-content>empty</body-content>

<attribute>
...
</attribute>
</tag>
----

Here is a sample of test.SampleTag$VarExtraInfo:

---

public class SampleTag extends TagSupport {
/**
* TODO: add file description.
*
* @author dsetrakyan
*/
public static class VarExtraInfo extends TagExtraInfo {
/**
* @see TagExtraInfo#getVariableInfo(TagData)
*/
@Override
public VariableInfo[] getVariableInfo(TagData data) {
return new VariableInfo[] {
new VariableInfo(
data.getAttributeString("var"), // Variable name.
SomeClass.class.getName(), // Variable type.
true, // Is potentially a new variable.
VariableInfo.AT_END // Scope to the end of enclosing type or end of the page.
)
};
}
}
...
}

Issue was resolved