Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) votes for Inline XBRL on March 02, 2017

The Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) voted on March 02, 2017 to propose amendments to make Inline XBRL (iXBRL) mandatory for listed companies and mutual funds. The proposal is aimed at improving the quality and accessibility of data submitted to the SEC. The new rule that proposes Inline XBRL would be made mandatory by early 2018. The SEC has opened a window of 60 days for the public to comment on the proposed new amendment. SEC has further made the IFRS taxonomy available, apart from the existing US GAAP taxonomy. As the EDGAR system previously did not support the IFRS taxonomy, foreign private issuers who were following IFRS were exempted from XBRL. With the new rule, foreign private issuers following IFRS may be asked to file their annual reports in XBRL for the fiscal period ending on or after December 15, 2017.

The SEC has provided an Inline XBRL viewer for filers to understand how their document appears. The Inline XBRL view works on the browser and one can mouse hover on the HTML document to view the XBRL tags associated with the same, making the review process user-friendly.

Most filing agents/ filers use separate software to prepare the HTML and XBRL instances. Inline XBRL solves the problem as the XBRL data is embedded into the HTML document minimizing the effort and time required to review documents. While there were only a few takers in 2016, a good number of companies are preparing to switch to Inline XBRL in Q1 and Q2, 2017.

DataTracks is equipped with Inline XBRL capabilities for filing with SEC. Facilitating the switch from XBRL to Inline XBRL for SEC filing, DataTracks with its expertise in software and qualified personnel is primed to offer superior service sans any switching cost, to the filers. Why wait until the last moment? DataTracks recommends public listed companies to move to Inline XBRL for filing forms 10Q, 10K, 20F, S1, 6K, 8K, etc., well in advance of the proposed 2018 deadline.