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Digital Tags Aim to Ease Data Searches

By Anne Kates Smith Kiplinger's Personal Finance
Sunday, August 10, 2008; Page F03

The Securities and Exchange Commission plans to throw investment sleuths a very big bone. The agency wants to require publicly traded companies, starting early next year, to file financial data in an interactive format that makes it easier to search and compare key financial figures.

Within two years, most public companies would be required to attach digital tags to data points such as earnings per share, dividends and operating profits. Mutual funds would start filing risk, return and cost data, plus other numbers, in the new, interactive language -- called extensible business reporting language, or XBRL -- by the end of 2009.

The SEC has a pilot program for funds and companies to file information in XBRL (see it at http://www.sec.gov/spotlight/xbrl/xbrlwebapp.shtml). You can set up digital feeds to capture company or mutual fund filings for three dozen companies and about 20 mutual funds so far.