Re: [tax] RE: [tax-tasc] Summary of XBRL GL discussion

Alex:

I must respectfully disagree with your assertion that "[t]he XBRL-GL 
assumption is that ALL roads lead to the general ledger and taxes or tax 
computations are based on an accounting view of the world". Perhaps you 
were exaggerating/oversimplifying for an effect? 

While a sophisticated general ledger system can potentially hold a 
tremendous amount of detail, 1) there is no promise that all of that 
detail will find its way there but lives in the sub-systems, 2) many of 
the documents and their related data in a business cycle do not find their 
way there at all although they are captured in other parts of the system 
... 3) and I am not even sure on what basis you can say that the tax 
motivator is necessarily "the accounting view". 

XBRL GL is a generic representation of the documents, parties, resources, 
links to accounts, links to XML/XBRL elements for reporting, and other 
classifications that are put together in different combinations to 
represent transactions or other triggers of taxation as a generic audit 
trail. It represents through the existing modules some large portion of 
the fields collected in a typical transaction, and the "X" of XML/XBRL is 
extensibility. so it can be expanded upon for the specifics of 
transactions in other industries. Anything with monetary amounts or 
quantities that can be put to accounts or classification codes can be 
represented. Documents and transactions can be represented before 
"accounting"/assignment of accounts or classifications, if that's what 
"where accounting may not occur" means.

<eccn />




Alex Fiteni <> 
04/13/2004 06:43 PM


To
Harm-Jan van Burg <>
cc
, 
Subject
Re: [tax] RE: [tax-tasc] Summary of XBRL GL discussion






Some additional considerations......
While the corporate income tax domain may favor an accounting based 
audit approach, there are many jurisdictions that levy taxes on 
transactions at several points where accounting may not occur, or the 
accounting for such is handled much later than the settlement date. 
Such tax methods require reporting and settlement based on a tax 
reporting period, that may or may not coincide with an accounting 
period.  The XBRL-GL assumption is that ALL roads lead to the general 
ledger and taxes or tax computations are based on an accounting view of 
the world, not a legislative view of the world - and this from an 
accountant no less!!  While this may work for countries that tie the tax 
reporting and computations to a common accounting and tax reporting 
period definition, how can we respond to those taxation systems that do 
not?  As well, there are times when a full disclosure of the facts of a 
transaction may be warranted, and the information in SAF and even 
XBRL-GL may not, indeed will not, be sufficient. 

Alex