An SEC announcement in late July, innocuously titled “SEC Announces Initiative to Assess Benefits of Tagged Data in Commission Filings,” eventually could impact financial and legal executives of publicly held companies more than many realize.
The term “tagged data” refers to a financial reporting methodology in which individual figures are marked with standard accounting-industry identifiers. No longer is a financial statement viewed as a single block of text. Instead, each element—such as net income or long term debt—carries its own identifying tag.
