[..] The so-called Standard Business Reporting regime has long been touted by the Australian Federal Government as a means to reduce the reporting burden on business by allowing company financial reports and tax returns to be machine-readable, removing manual processes and reducing errors by companies and government agencies [..] The use of SBR is also now compulsory for transferring member data between superannuation funds under the Superstream reforms [..]

The ATO, which now has responsibility for SBR, said on Tuesday it had decided to replace its proprietary interface with open-source software ebMS 3.0/AS4, which is being widely adopted in Europe, where several countries are mandating schemes similar to SBR [..]

“In talking to the developer community, the very clear message has been that they want to see the same standards used in both the business-to-government and business-to-business spaces”, said Australian Business Register deputy registrar Mark Jackson, who has responsibility for the SBR program.