The Standard Business Reporting program – a Council of Australian Governments' (COAG) reform initiative to reduce red tape for business – today achieved a major milestone with the release of reporting specifications for a further 10 forms which can now be used by financial and business software developers to include in their products next year.
This release – the largest to date – includes seven State and Territory payroll return forms and three Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) forms.
SBR is on track to cut red tape for business when implementation beings in July 2010.
This latest release which includes three ASIC reports (one of which is the ASIC Financial Report), as well as seven state payroll tax forms, shows that SBR is on track to deliver nearly $800 million savings to business annually when SBR is fully operational.
SBR will enable over 50 forms to be generated seamlessly using business record keeping, accounting and payroll systems. SBR will streamline reporting and save time for business.
Current reporting requirements impose a significant burden on business — a burden that the Australian Government is committed to reducing. Standard Business Reporting (SBR) will reduce the burden for business of reporting to governments from July 2010.
Led by Treasury, the SBR Program is designed to use international standards and business reporting language. Using a single secure sign-on, business will be able to send information directly from their SBR-enabled software to 11 reporting agencies, including the eight State and Territory revenue offices. SBR continues to work with commercial and in-house software developers encouraging them to build SBR functionality into their accounting, financial and payroll systems so business can take advantage of the benefits of SBR from July 2010.
More information on SBR is available on www.sbr.gov.au.
17 December 2009