A House subcommittee is considering requiring the Securities and Exchange Commission to exempt any company with revenues below $1 billion from submitting financial statements in XBRL.

The Subcommittee on Capital Markets of the House Committee on Financial Services is holding a hearing to consider seven legislative proposals intended to reduce barriers to capital formation, including a measure to direct the SEC to exempt non-accelerated filers from the XBRL filing requirement. The subcommittee is reviewing a discussion draft and plans to hear testimony from witnesses representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, state securities administrators, and a handful of small companies and securities firms.

The Data Transparency Coalition, a trade association that advocates for data reform for the U.S. government, says the bill reflects “justified frustration” over the SEC's failure to transition the XBRL filing requirement into useful financial data for investors. The SEC has taken heat for failing to crack down on persistent errors in XBRL filings that make the data unreliable to users of financial statement data who were meant to benefit from the XBRL filing requirement.

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform has already tasked the SEC to answer a formal request explaining how it uses information gathered through XBRL filings, and how it will enforce the quality of those filings. The committee wants to understand what the SEC plans to do to correct data quality problems, and where and why the SEC might still rely on paper filings. The SEC recently called for bids in search of a contractor to help the regulatory agency develop an inline XBRL software solution, or a way that companies could submit both paper and data-interactive filings in a single submission.

Other capital formation measures on the subcommittee's agenda are related to credit availability, small business merger and acquisition issues, and emerging growth companies. The subcommittee is looking at allowing certain emerging growth companies to increase the tick size of their stocks and amending certain provisions of securities laws related to the treatment of emerging growth companies.