Swedish Government Makes Commitment to Digital Reporting
Swedish companies spend in excess of SEK 1.7 Billion (USD $212 M) each year submitting annual reports to that country’s business registrar, Bolagsverket. In an effort to reduce those costs and increase efficiency, Economic Development and Innovation Minister Mikael Damberg announced recently that the Swedish government is going to start pushing firms towards digital submission with the aim of making such practice mandatory in 2018.
Citing the benefits other countries have achieved, Danberg highlighted the need for a common standard for submitting reports that would also facilitate the sharing of information between different government agencies, and indicated that standard would be XBRL, which in 2015 was approved by the Swedish Standards Institute as aSwedish national standard for electronic reporting and exchange of financial information between organisations.
According to XBRL Sweden, this move towards digital reporting is the first step towards Standard Business Reporting. The implementation will be led by Bolagsverket with the participation of Bokföringsnämnden (the Accounting Standards Board), Skatteverket (The Swedish Tax Agency), and Statistiska (Statistics Sweden). Read the press release. (in Swedish; try this translation or Chrome).
