Our recent story on the mputing language XBRL claiming it uld st firms ‘tens of thousands’ has made me wonder why are the regulators forcefully pushing this technology by making its use mandatory?

The rise of the new reporting language uld offer businesses around the world the chance to work on the same footing and simplify how financial information is mmunicated through mputers. Surely a good thing.

XBRL, or eXtensible business reporting language, is a form of electronic tagging of certain words or information when making financial reports. It then allows investors to use those tags to find and mpare apples with apples.

Usually when it mes to technology it is either the software vendors or users who are on board and trying to nvince the other party that this is what the industry needs.

With XBRL, however, software mpanies and users are united in their belief that it is currently overmplicated and expensive, with more time needed to work out the detail.

Going through reports and adding the ‘tags’ can be a long and stly process.

One letter we received on the subject claimed that HMRC was not ‘listening to plain mmon sense’ when it mes to XBRL. It seems the mandatory implementation will force smaller practices to lose thousands of pounds which cannot be passed on to clients because practices have to remain mpetitive in difficult times.

Would it not be better for HMRC to advise mpanies to shift to XBRL and incentivise them to do so, similar to incentives for online tax filing?

XBRL users would have later deadlines for filing.

Although this will put added pressure on practices, it would give them a reason to change.