XBRL US submitted a comment letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in response to their rule proposal on Modernization of Beneficial Ownership Reporting. In our letter, we agreed with the Commission plan to require Schedules 13D and 13G for beneficial ownership data, to be reported in structured format, however we urged the Commission to opt for XBRL, rather than building a custom XML schema as is currently proposed. The rationale for XBRL over XML is as follows:
- Building a custom, single-use XML schema will require data users to build new code to access data; and reporting entities to find new custom-built applications for reporting
- The Commission will bear the cost of building the custom schema and developing style sheets to render the data human-readable
- Changes in reporting needs will result in significant costs across the reporting ecosystem
- Validation will not be as easy and cost-effective to implement
Read the letter: XBRL US Comment on Modernization of Beneficial Ownership Reporting File No. S7-06-22
