Cases in Japan
The National Tax Agency started operating e-Tax system in 2004, which enabled electronic tax return and payment of national tax. The e-Tax system employed XBRL as a data format of financial statements for reporting corporate tax (See the chart below).
At the start of operating e-Tax system, XBRL Spec 2.0 was applied, and from Sep. 2008, the system introduced the Spec 2.1. Japan introduced XBRL in taxation at an early stage worldwide, the third after Australia and the Great Britain.
Electronic tax return in Japan which started from 2004 enables tax reporting without visiting a tax office or a financial institution’s office. It is used by not only tax payers but it is used regularly by tax accountants who submit financial reports on behalf of tax payers. The rate of e-Tax users is increasing year by year. The e-Tax software programs are not only supplied by National Tax Agency, but many kinds of retail packages of software supporting tax return are developed, which include XBRL for data preparation and data transmission to e-Tax.
Recently, by utilizing XBRL data format in e-Tax, several financial institutions started a new service of receiving financial reports submitted to e-Tax through the internet, and use them for screening borrowers. XBRL now draws attention from the view point of such an efficient screening business.
