ACRA extends effective date for revised XBRL filing requirements to 1 May 2021

15 December 2020

On 11 December 2020, the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (“ACRA”) announced the extension of the effective date for the revised eXtensible Business Reporting Language (“XBRL”) filing requirements to 1 May 2021. Previously, ACRA advised that the effective date was 1 January 2021.

In view of the current situation amid the Covid-19 pandemic, ACRA is providing a one-off extension to give companies more time to adopt the revised filing requirements and data elements for the filing of financial statements in XBRL format. Details are as follows:

• Companies are required to apply the revised XBRL filing requirements and data elements from 1 May 2021; and
• Companies can opt to voluntarily adopt revised XBRL filing requirements and data elements up till 30 April 2021.

All companies are urged by ACRA to voluntarily adopt the revised XBRL filing requirements early as most companies would be able to benefit from a reduced number of data elements that they need to file with ACRA under the revised XBRL requirements.

Background

On 16 May 2020, ACRA announced that the revised filing requirements for companies required to file financial statements in XBRL format would take effect from 1 January 2021. Previously, companies could opt to voluntarily adopt the revised XBRL filing requirements when filing financial statements from 16 May 2020 to 31 December 2020.

Reference materials

The media release is available on the ACRA website www.acra.gov.sg or by clicking here.