Re: [tax] Comments on XML Position Paper

[Philip Allen <plega-oasis@decisionsoft.com>]

On Tuesday 09 March 2004 11:47, Andy Greener wrote:

> I'm also a little nervous about recommending XBRL wholesale as the
> standard for tax reporting. It is certainly appropriate in the corporate
> financial reporting world, and by extension therefore the corporate tax
> reporting world, but I can think of a number of tax reporting scenarios
> here in the UK for instance for which it would be less than ideal
> (personal tax compliance information, payroll deduction and compliance
> information for income tax and National Insurance, duty on property and
> financial transactions, etc).

I would like to support Andy's point here.  XBRL is very well suited for
corporate financial data and related tax and regulatory reporting - but
much other tax data is transactional in nature and so there is a strong
case for couching it in conventional XML.  The widespread acceptance of
XBRL is a huge step forward for the financial services industry but we
must be careful not to oversell it.

Regards
-- 
Philip Allen, Chairman      DecisionSoft Limited
+44-1865-203192             http://www.decisionsoft.com