Standard Business Reporting (SBR)

Reanda Australian firm has been working in conjunction with the Australian federal government in its development of the Standard Business Reporting system (SBR)  as mentioned in our earlier article it uses the internationally recognised XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) which is an open standard mark-up language optimised for business information, including but not limited to financial and accounting information. It is a variant of XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and adopts the same syntax and related technologies (XML Schema, XLink). XBRL is the optimisation of XML to represent business and financial data. eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) is the platform used by the Australian federal government. The SBR is the improved and streamlined business-to-government agency information exchange system.

We tested the SBR platform in respect of the following documents:

• Payroll tax to multiple State treasury offices for a number of clients,
• Notification of new employee details (Employment Declarations) to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) for clients, and
• Audited financial statements and associated forms with the federal agency, the Australian Securities & Investments Commission.

The Federal Commissioner of Taxation, Mr Michael D'Ascenzo who also is the Vice Chair of the International Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) forum on Tax Administration, presented his thoughts on the changes being made in the ATO’s IT systems and program at the 10^th International Tax Administration Conference in Sydney on 2 April 2012, he also presented a paper on SBR in his speech to the CPA Sydney Professional Accountants Group Annual Dinner, 2 February 2012 as discussed in one of our previous articles.

These announced IT changes included the plan to replace the present Electronic Lodgement System (ELS) which was started some 30 years ago in the late-1980 by the SBR lodgement system commencing from 2015.

There are about 22,000 registered tax agents in Australia, there are about 1,300 tax agents are not lodging forms electronically. The ATO has indicated that from July 2013, tax agents must lodge forms electronically to be eligible for the concessional extension of lodging income tax returns for their clients.

This will encourage all tax agents in Australia to use the electronic lodgement system and eventually all tax agents will be integrated into the SBR system.

Superannuation contributions are mandatory for all employers in Australia for their employees. It is quite difficult for employee to keep track on his/her superannuation entitlements especially when the employee has been working for many employer on casual basis.

The Australian government has implemented a reform project using SBR to easily keep track on individual employee superannuation entitlements without imposing extensive administrative burdens in the back office of the superannuation industry.

In August 2012, Thomas Reuters became the first company that successfully lodged its income tax return using the SBR system.

Should you require assistance in implementing your SBR\XBRL reporting system, please contact Reanda Australia.