IFRS Foundation to Add Common-Practice Tags to IFRS Taxonomy
The IFRS Foundation said it will publish supplementary tags for the IFRS Taxonomy that reflect disclosures that are commonly reported by entities in their IFRS financial statements. The foundation, the International Accounting Standards Board’s parent organization, said the common-practice tags will enhance the comparability of information by enabling entities to create IFRS financial statements in XBRL (extensible business reporting language) with fewer entity-specific taxonomy tags.
The foundation is developing the common-practice tags through the analysis of more than 200 financial statements—that is, line items from statements of financial position, comprehensive income, cash flows and changes in equity, and block-tagged notes and accounting policies—that have been prepared in accordance with IFRS by entities in a broad range of geographical areas and industries, including financial institutions and insurance companies. The tags will be published over the coming weeks as a draft supplement (that is, as an interim release) to the IFRS Taxonomy 2011. The tags will be subject to the same due process that is applied to the development of the core IFRS Taxonomy. They will be published for public comment.
Adding the common-practice tags is the first part of a process that the foundation plans to undertake to enhance the usability of the IFRS Taxonomy by reflecting common reporting practice. The next step will be to examine financial statement note disclosures in detail and identify common reporting practice in these note disclosures. As part of this effort, the foundation is seeking volunteers among listed IFRS filers to participate in a task force on XBRL detailed tagging. The results of this initiative are expected later in the year and will be used to improve the common-practice tags.
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