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Cycle 1 prototype taxonomy release

Introduction

Purpose

As the first of five iterate releases of the SBR taxonomy, the Cycle 1 prototype taxonomy includes a sample set of nine form types representing 38 business reporting form variations commonly used to provide information to government.

The SBR Cycle 1 prototype taxonomy is designed to demonstrate the core aspects of building a multi-agency, harmonised taxonomy for broad review by software developers, business, government and various industry groups. It is not intended to be complete in terms of its content or technical architecture.  However, many of the concepts and approaches used in this prototype are expected to be used as the basis for the development of future SBR Production Taxonomies and associated support services.

What is the Cycle 1 prototype taxonomy?

The Cycle 1 prototype taxonomy is the result of the proposed:

  • method, approach and systems that are expected to be employed in SBR taxonomy building;
  • team structure, including roles and responsibilities to develop the future production SBR taxonomies; and
  • concept harmonisation (using simple construction methods and technique variations, as well as documentation of the business rules and construction of the calculation rules supporting elements). 

This prototype taxonomy is also designed to provide participating agencies, business intermediaries and software developers with learnings and experiences relating to the XBRL financial reporting taxonomies, including:

  • identifying and resolving more complex taxonomy architecture and engineering issues (eg use of dimensions, tuples, and formula linkbases)
  • forming an ongoing SBR taxonomy development team
  • exploring alignment and suitability with candidate standards (eg AS 4590 and the IFRS-GP taxonomy)
  • commencing development of a data governance and maintenance processes to support future integration with a metadata repository (eg versioning of taxonomy and metadata model, change control, configuration management)
  • transitioning to the next cycles of taxonomy development

As a prototype, this taxonomy is not considered to be complete in terms of form content, taxonomy architecture and engineering and concept harmonisation.  For these reasons is not to be used in anyway other than for demonstration and education.  Notwithstanding this, it is likely that it will serve as a base to build upon going forward into the development of the future SBR production taxonomies.

The Cycle 1 prototype taxonomy has been developed through the cooperation of five government agencies, under the guidance of the Treasury; namely:

  • Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS);
  • Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA);
  • Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC);
  • Australian Taxation Office (ATO); and
  • Queensland Office of State Revenue (OSR).

Scope of the Cycle 1 prototype taxonomy

The SBR Cycle 1 prototype taxonomy is limited to the metadata content of:

  • five government agencies; and
  • nine form types, which represent 38 form variations.

The agencies elected sections of published electronic specifications and paper forms as the basis for the development of the taxonomy prototype as follows.

Australian Bureau of Statistics

  1. Economic Activity Survey 2006-2007, 1Z18S
  2. Quarterly Business Indicators Survey, Q1M, Q2M, Q3M, Q4M
  3. Survey of New Capital - Quarter ending June 2007, CAP

Australian Prudential Regulation Authority

  1. Statement of financial position (Licensed)  ARF 323.0

Australian Securities and Investments Commission

  1. Copy of Financial Statements and Reports, Form 388 (excluding financial attachments)

Australian Taxation Office

  1. Tax File Number (TFN) Declaration
  2. Payment Summaries (PAYG)
  3. Activity Statements (BAS, IAS)

Queensland Office of State Revenue

  1. Payroll Tax Annual Reconciliation, OSR – P4

What isn’t in scope

It is important to note that for the future versions of the SBR Taxonomy to be considered complete in later cycles it will have to include elements that:

  • Enable the implementation of the electronic message exchange services. These fields do no appear in the paper form and will be assessed upon their business value. Depending on the outcomes of the assessment they were left out of the prototype taxonomy and dealt with in the next cycle project. In this prototype, only ATO forms demonstrate messaging elements.
  • Are used in the calculation/derivation of the fields contained in the forms. These fields are categorised into two groups:
    • “Intermediary Fields”: concepts that have calculations/derivations specified in the instructions guide and then are used in the calculation of fields contained in the form itself; and
    • “Business Level”: industry concepts (such as IFRS and industry chart of accounts elements) that are used in the makeup of a form’s field.

Intermediary Fields and Business Level data have been considered out of scope for modelling in the Cycle 1 prototype taxonomy.  The next version of the taxonomy will support the data capture and processing of these concepts.

  • Link to, or import from, external taxonomies (eg. IFRS-GP).  The IFRS GP was not finalised for 2008 at the time of publication of this prototype.
  • Utilise new XBRL technologies, including:
    • formula Linkbase specification:
    • rendering specification: and
    • dimensions specification.

What SBR is asking software developers to do

Given this first release of the taxonomy is a prototype, SBR is not expecting developers to try to create instance documents using it. Instead, SBR is seeking feedback on the following general aspects:

  1. Structure and architecture of the taxonomy
    1. Does it make sense?
    2.  What is your preference for modularisation?  Agency/forms based (as applied in the prototype) or under some other basis (for example, by function — demonstrated using the definition linkbase in the prototype)?
  2. Content

    Is the way that the meta data content is captured adequate for your needs? For example:

    • element definitions (where available);
    • business rules (as documentation);
    • calculations (in the calculation linkbase, where available),
    • references (where available); and
    • edit (validation) rules.
  3. Mapping

To what extent can you map the data in your system to this taxonomy, and to what extent are there intermediate or supplementary mappings required to support the capture of the data against the taxonomy?

  1. Naming convention

Do you prefer the IFRS (using commas) or SBR (using dot notation) naming conventions that are used in the taxonomy?

Please forward any comments/feedback to SBR by no later than Friday 16 May 2008.

Disclaimer

This Standard Business Reporting Cycle 1 prototype taxonomy and supporting materials are provided by SBR for the purposes of demonstration and obtaining relevant feedback on the proposed Taxonomy.  All of the material provided here is as a prototype, or “proof of concept” and is being given by way of example only.  As such, it is not exhaustive and does not necessarily reflect the further planned development of the SBR Program or future policy intentions in relation to XBRL.  The Cycle 1 prototype taxonomy should not be relied upon by users as duplicating the terms of the final SBR Taxonomy.  The contents of the SBR Taxonomy are subject to changes following the receipt of feedback and undertaking further developmental work.  Users are also referred to the general disclaimer for this website.