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" using appropriate standards such as XBRL, XML and JSON, then provide systems to process information classified under the taxonomy.
History
The Dutch Taxonomy 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". The Dutch approach was adopted by the Australian government in 2006, which established the Standard Business Reporting Program. In addition to Australia, other countries 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 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. In March 2017, the and published a research report explaining how the adoption of Standard Business Reporting in the United States would reduce costs for both companies and agencies. The report, "Standard Business Reporting: Open Data to Cut Compliance Costs", defines SBR as multiple regulatory agencies adopting a common open data structure for the information they collect.
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.
Australian Implementation
The 2006 report of the Taskforce on Reducing Regulatory Burdens on Business, "Rethinking Regulation", 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. 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.
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 and the SBR program itself.
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 conduct their reporting via these third parties. 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.".
