The 2016 GAAP financial reporting taxonomy is available at FASB’s website, FASB announced Thursday, pending final acceptance by the SEC.
FASB’s staff develops and maintains the taxonomy, which applies to public issuers registered with the SEC. The 2016 taxonomy contains updates for accounting standards changes and other improvements to the taxonomy SEC issuers have used previously.
The taxonomy is a list of computer-readable tags in extensible business reporting language (XBRL) that allows companies to tag the thousands of pieces of financial data that are included in financial statements and their footnotes.
Using the tags, investors, analysts, journalists, regulators, and other financial statement users are able to electronically search for, assemble, and process data.
More information on the taxonomy is available at the SEC’s XBRL portal.
—Ken Tysiac (ktysiac@aicpa.org) is a JofA editorial director.
