Standard Business Reporting

Standard Business Reporting is a group of international programs instigated by a number of governments to reduce the regulatory burden for business.

The concept is to make business the centre when it comes to managing business-to-government reporting obligations. Businesses conduct their own financial administration; the facts they record and decisions they make should drive their reporting. The government should be able to receive and process this information without imposing undue constraints on how businesses administer their finances.

The method used to achieve this goal is to define a "common language" (or taxonomy) using appropriate standards such as XBRL, XML and JSON, then provide systems to process information classified under the taxonomy.

History

The Dutch Taxonomy Project (Nederlandse Taxonomie Project) or NTP began in 2004 as part of the Dutch cabinet’s objectives to reduce the administrative burdens on businesses. The project was sponsored jointly by the Dutch Ministries of Finance and Justice. The NTP created an XBRL taxonomy that "enables businesses to generate the required reporting information directly from their own records and the government to then process this information efficiently and effectively".[1]

The Dutch approach was adopted by the Australian government in 2006, which established the Standard Business Reporting (SBR) Program. In addition to Australia, other countries (including New Zealand) are also planning to apply this approach. This approach has since been internationally designated as Standard Business Reporting.

In December 2008, the Dutch government decided to rename the NTP to the Standard Business Reporting (SBR) Programme, thus adopting the name introduced by Australia. The Dutch SBR programme has been tasked with deepening and embedding the results obtained so far and broadening the scope to other domains and applications.[2]

Implementations

Dutch Implementation

As of the first of January 2007, businesses and intermediaries can report their financial data to the government using the Dutch XBRL taxonomy.[3]

Australian Implementation

The 2006 report of the Taskforce on Reducing Regulatory Burdens on Business, “Rethinking Regulation” (the Banks report), recognised that government reporting requirements impose a significant burden on Australian business.

The objective of the SBR Program in Australia is to reduce the cost of reporting for business by A$800 million over six years at a cost of A$320 million over the same period.[4]

The key activity of the SBR Program is to work across agencies and jurisdictions to standardise the reporting approach and language – developing the taxonomy. As well as the reporting language, SBR is developing a new e-channel for business which will include a single sign-on to on-line services across the agencies that are in scope.

Scope

The agencies in scope are:

More than 75 government forms are in scope to be rationalised and replaced by electronic lodgments.

Planned Solution

The Australian SBR solution is planned to be developed as follows:

Business Advisory Forum

The SBR program also created the SBR Business Advisory Forum as a way to provide ongoing consultation to the project. It is made up of 18 representatives drawn from industry groups (e.g. Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia), professional associations (e.g. CPA Australia) and the SBR program itself.

The chair is Peter Strong, of the Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia.

NZ implementation

In May 2008 the New Zealand Ministry of Economic Development published a business case for adopting an SBR program. The business case states that success relies on a high take-up rate by intermediaries such as accountants and lawyers. This is because many owner-operators and small businesses (68% and 21% of businesses, respectively) conduct their reporting via these third parties.[4]

The business case states that "SBR will deliver compliance cost reductions to business by reducing the need for them to submit information to multiple agencies, standardising data definitions and implementing a standard communication language.".[4]

Notes

  1. ↑ van Burg et al, Foreword, p iii.
  2. ↑ van Burg et al, p 1
  3. ↑ Dutch Taxonomy Project, home page
  4. 1 2 3 Hodgson, p 2

References

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