IRS Move To XML In 2004

   

Washington (July 11, 2002) -- The Internal Revenue Service is readying a move to XML for e-filed corporate income tax returns and schedules K-1 for the 2004 filing season.Terence H. Lutes, director of the IRS Office of Electronic Tax Administration, said on the IRS Tax Talk Today Webcast that this will allow a free flow of data between accounting schedules and tax forms, and will provide the IRS with a single data standard.

XML--Extensible Markup Language--and its business/accounting specification XBRL--Extensible Business Reporting Language--allow the entering of financial information just once for a variety of uses by tagging the information in a way that provides for easy retrieval and merging of separate documents.

A number of tax preparation software companies are already building an XBRL component into their software products. Using XBRL, an accountant need enter information just once for uses including tax returns, a printed financial statement, an HTML document for a company's Web site, an EDGAR filing document, and other specialized reporting formats such as credit reports and loan documents.

--Electronic Accountant Newswire staff

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