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IFRS Foundation Releases Proposed Update 2 to the IFRS Taxonomy 2018

On December 6, 2018, the IFRS Foundation released “IFRS Taxonomy 2018—Proposed Update 2 General Improvements” to the public for consultation.

According to the press release from the IFRS Foundation, the proposed update:

  • “introduces implementation notes that explain how to use specific IFRS Taxonomy elements and avoid tagging errors;
  • introduces the duration element type for reporting information about a period of time to achieve more consistent tagging;
  • removes entry points without documentation labels to make it easier to access the IFRS Taxonomy.”

According to the IFRS Foundation, such general improvements to the IFRS Taxonomy 2018 tend to arise in response to feedback from stakeholders and typically are changes that are not a result of “changes to IFRS standards and analysis of common reporting practice.”

If adopted, the updates should, among other things, help to support more consistent tagging.

For instance, the implementation notes should ideally reduce the number of preparers who make tagging errors. Additionally, the implementation notes should “clarify whether positive or negative values should be entered for elements without assigned balance attributes.”

Equally, the removal of the seven entry points without documentation labels that are currently in place within the IFRS Taxonomy is intended to “make the entry points less complex to navigate” and “encourage the global use of documentation labels”.

You can view the proposed update from the IFRS Foundation in full here.

How to comment

Comments can be submitted to the IFRS Foundation until February 4, 2019.

If you wish to comment, there are a number of ways you can do so:

  • respond via the IFRS Foundations’ “open for comment” page;
  • email commentletters@ifrs.org; or
  • send comments via post to IFRS Foundation, Columbus Building, 7 Westferry Circus, Canary Wharf, London, E14 4HD, United Kingdom.

The SEC’s position

While the SEC has encouraged interested parties to submit comments to the IFRS Foundation during the public consultation period in order to “continue to improve the process for creating and using XBRL structured financial statements” the SEC has also stated that the availability for public comment on Proposed Update 2 “does not indicate Commission approval of any potential regulatory changes related to the EDGAR Filer Manual.”

This is a typical stance taken by the SEC, who adopted the same position when “IFRS Taxonomy 2018—Proposed Update 1 Common Practice (IFRS 13 Fair Value Measurement)” was released in September 2018.

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