22 April 2010
The International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) Foundation through its standard-setting body, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), is the independent, private and not-for-profit body responsible for developing a single set of high quality global financial reporting standards for use throughout the world.
XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is rapidly becoming the global standard for electronic financial reporting. The IASC Foundation has played an important role in encouraging the development of online financial reporting using XBRL.
On 17 December 2008, the US Securities and Exchange Commission adopted rules that require all US-listed FPIs to submit their financial reports, including their periodic reports, in Interactive Data format, and specifically in XBRL. According to this rule, FPIs "using IFRS as issued by the IASB will be required to tag their financial information using the most recent list of tags for international financial reporting, as released by the IASCF and specified in the EDGAR Filer Manual".
In short, from 15 June 2011, FPIs filing their Form 20Fs to the US SEC using IFRS will be obliged to submit these filings in XBRL using the IFRS Taxonomy issued by the IASC Foundation.
FPIs, which will be mandated to file with XBRL in IFRS from 15 June 2011, are invited to participate in a pilot initiative being coordinated by the IASC Foundation. The pilot will focus on FPI use of the IFRS Taxonomy 2010 to tag SEC filings in XBRL.
The aim of this pilot initiative is for IFRS-reporting FPIs to produce real XBRL filings, including block-tagged notes. This will help to determine and demonstrate that the IFRS Taxonomy is practical for filers and for users of filed XBRL content. Participating companies should be able to meet the 15 June 2011 target, and to produce filing-quality reports for a recent period prepared in XBRL (tagging level 1) using the IFRS Taxonomy 2010. FPIs from all industries are welcome to participate.
Although FPIs will retain ultimate responsibility for preparing the filings, the IASC Foundation is committed to providing assistance, to review files, and to interact with preparers when specific questions arise.
The pilot initiative will start as soon as the final IFRS Taxonomy 2010 is released which is, tentatively, scheduled for the end of April 2010. It is expected that the XBRL instance documents should be made available within six weeks of the taxonomy release.
Companies interested in joining this initiative are invited to express their interest in writing. The IASC Foundation will accept applications until 15 May 2010.