XBRL Taxonomy Development Environment

The ABS is participating in an Australian Government initiative, called Standard Business Reporting (‘SBR’), aimed at reducing the regulatory reporting burden for business and is seeking offers for an XBRL Taxonomy Development Environment.

SBR is a multi-agency multi-jurisdictional programme led by the Treasury and involving the Australian Tax Office (‘ATO’), the Australian Bureau of Statistics (‘ABS’), the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (‘ASIC’), the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (‘APRA’) and the Offices of State Revenue (‘OSRs’).

Based on overseas experience as well as an acceptance by the accounting and financial professions, the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (‘XBRL’) has been selected for use within the SBR programme. XBRL taxonomies will be embedded within accounting software packages to allow the automated population of government forms based on financial and other information held in the software of the business. After user completion, editing and authorisation, the resulting data will be submitted electronically to government.