IFRS Foundation Issues Exposure Draft of Updated XBRL Taxonomy

The IFRS Foundation has published an exposure draft of the IFRS Taxonomy 2012. The proposed taxonomy is consistent with IFRSs, including IASs and the IFRS for SMEs. The IFRS Taxonomy 2012 is a translation of IFRSs as issued at 1 January 2012 into XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language).

The proposed taxonomy includes 'common practice' extensions, which were derived from an analysis of IFRS financial statements and are designed to diminish the need for preparers to customise the taxonomy to fit their individual business. The need for these extensions originally arose from United Statements Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) concerns about the suitability of the existing IFRS taxonomy for US filing purposes and the outcomes of a pilot XBRL study conducted in 2011.

The proposed taxonomy is open for comment until 17 March 2012. Click for more information (link to IASB website). The United States Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) has also recently announced (link to FASB website) the 2012 US GAAP taxonomy.