This Week in XBRL: Site Outages, Congress Support, and IFRS Goes Global

XBRL has had a rocky week! Despite a growing increase in the use and spread of XBRL, experts are starting to see cracks appear in the automated solutions that some companies in the UK are already using.

For several hours yesterday, many UK businesses were unable to access http://www.xbrl.org, or any of its sub-domains. For those companies, this meant that their XBRL software was unable to connect to online taxonomies, and Corporation Tax returns could not be filed. Software can be configured to reference locally-stored taxonomies, but the process is complex and would require downloadable taxonomy packages. For now, current best practices require XBRL software to reference the online document, or companies can rely on XBRL experts like Merrill Corporation, who are less effected by such outages.

When the site outage dust cleared, discussion this week turned to the likely spread of IFRS through more global jurisdictions. Already popular in the UK, Brazil, and Japan, most analysts believe the SEC will support the International Financial Reporting Standards by the end of the year, and that means a change in the way corporations report business.

Finally, another major talking point came this week when AICPA reported on the numerous bills in Congress calling for the use of a reporting system like XBRL.

[The Standard DATA Act] is certainly not the first bill that calls for the use of XBRL. Earlier this year, President Obama signed the Children and Family Services Innovation and Improvement Act into law. This law requires that the Department of Health and Human Services designate a common data reporting standard, i.e. XBRL. Specifically the law is aimed at standardizing the reports that the states submit to the federal government on how they spend federal funds for child welfare programs.

AICPA also pointed out the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA Act), which is still under consideration. All of these pieces of legislation point toward the adoption of XBRL reporting for congressional purposes.

As always, Merrill Corporation will continue to monitor changes in the XBRL environment, to be better prepared to provide your XBRL solutions.

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