eXtensible Business Reporting Language
XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is an open, XML-based standard for tagging financial data so that software can read and process it. Instead of reporting "Net income: $96,995 million" only as text on a page, XBRL attaches a machine-readable tag identifying what the value represents, the period it covers, the entity, the currency, and the precision.
The SEC requires public companies to submit the financial statements in their 10-K and 10-Q filings in XBRL format, which is what makes large-scale fundamental analysis from SEC filings possible.
Each tagged value is called a "fact," tying together the concept being reported (a taxonomy element such as us-gaap:NetIncomeLoss), the context (which entity, which period), the unit, and the value itself. The SEC began phasing in mandatory XBRL reporting in 2009 and the standard has since evolved into Inline XBRL, which embeds the tags directly inside the HTML filing. GeminIQ reads these facts directly from EDGAR, preserving each company's as-filed values rather than mapping them onto a normalized third-party schema. For the full explanation of why this matters to investors, see the guide linked below.
A: XBRL makes financial disclosures machine-readable, so investors, analysts, and regulators can extract and compare data across companies and periods without manually re-keying figures. It improves transparency and lowers the cost of analyzing filings at scale.
A: The XBRL data represents the same numbers reported in the human-readable financial statements, but in a structured, tagged form. Inline XBRL combines both into a single document so the figures you read and the data machines extract are guaranteed to match.
A: A taxonomy is the dictionary of reporting concepts that XBRL tags reference. The U.S. GAAP taxonomy, for example, defines elements like revenue, net income, and total assets, along with their definitions and relationships.
Further Reading: What Is XBRL? How SEC Tagging Affects Your Investment Data
GeminIQ turns SEC EDGAR filings into interactive fundamental analysis. Explore the financial metrics library or start screening every US public company.
Start 7-Day Free Trial →