IFRS Foundation Publishes Proposed IFRS Taxonomy Enhancements for Reporting Common-Practice

The IFRS Foundation today published for public comment an exposure draft of the IFRS Taxonomy 2011 interim release: common-practice concepts.  The proposed interim release contains supplementary tags for the IFRS Taxonomy that reflect disclosures that are commonly reported by entities in their IFRS financial statements.  The supplementary tags are intended to enhance the comparability of financial information, and are consistent with IFRSs and with the XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) architecture of the IFRS Taxonomy 2011.

In April the IFRS Foundation announced its intention to enhance the usability of the IFRS Taxonomy by providing additional elements that reflect common reporting practice across the world and across industries.  The proposed interim release is the first part of this process.  Once these initial common-practice tags are finalised, entities will be able to apply these tags to line items in their primary financial statements and to notes and accounting policies within these financial statements (using text blocks) with fewer entity-specific tags.  It is expected that reducing the need for entity and jurisdiction-specific tags will reduce divergence in reporting practice, thereby enhancing the comparability of IFRS financial information.  The next part of the process will involve the detailed analysis of disclosures within notes to financial statements and identifying common reporting practice in these note disclosures.

An interactive webcast on the proposed interim release will be held at 9.00am (UK time) on Tuesday 28 June, and repeated at 3.00pm (UK time) on the same day. To register for the webcast, please email xbrl@ifrs.org.

The exposure draft of the IFRS Taxonomy 2011 interim release: common-practice concepts is open for comment until 2 August 2011. The IFRS Foundation will consider the feedback received from this consultation, after which a final version of the interim release will be published. The supplementary tags will be consolidated into the IFRS Taxonomy 2012.