The IASC Foundation publishes IFRS Taxonomy 2008
31 March 2008
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The International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) Foundation’s XBRL Team today announced the release of the near final version of the IFRS Taxonomy 2008.
The IFRS Taxonomy 2008 is a complete translation of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs) as published in the IFRS Bound Volume 2008 into XBRL, an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) language that is used to communicate information between businesses. The IFRS Taxonomy 2008 is published in the same languages as the IFRS Bound Volume 2008.
The specific characteristics of XBRL will provide users of the IFRS Taxonomy 2008 with easier filing, access to and comparison of financial data.
The IFRS Taxonomy 2008 represents a complete review of past taxonomies and is also the first taxonomy to undergo an extensive external review by the XBRL Quality Review Team (XQRT) that was set up by the IASC Foundation at the end of 2007. The XQRT comprises 20 experts from the preparer community, securities regulators, central banks, financial institutions and software companies.
Interested parties are invited to access the near final version of the IFRS Taxonomy 2008 and send comments by 30 May 2008. In accordance with the XBRL International policy the near final version of the IFRS Taxonomy 2008 is freely available on the IFRS XBRL Website.
The final version is expected to be released at the end of June 2008 and will also be freely available.
Commenting on the announcement, Gerrit Zalm, Chairman of the Trustees, said:
XBRL is rapidly becoming the format of choice for the electronic filing of financial information—particularly within jurisdictions reporting under IFRSs. However, this will require IFRS Taxonomy updates to be synchronised with publication of the IFRS bound volume and I congratulate the team on their achievements.
Olivier Servais, the IASC Foundation’s XBRL Team Leader, added:
The publication of the near final draft of the 2008 IFRS Taxonomy marks an important step in bringing XBRL into the mainstream of financial reporting.
Press enquiries
Technical enquiries
- Olivier Servais, IFRS XBRL Team Leader
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7246 6927
Email: oservais@iasb.org