The IFRS Foundation has announced that it will publish supplementary tags for the IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) taxonomy that reflect disclosures that are commonly reported by entities in their IFRS financial statements.

By publishing these supplementary tags, the IFRS Foundation is taking a first step in providing additional elements as part of its XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) taxonomy that reflect common reporting practice across the world and across industries.  The publication of these common-practice tags will enable entities to create IFRS financial statements in XBRL with fewer entity-specific taxonomy tags, thereby enhancing the comparability of information.

The common-practice tags are being developed through the analysis of over 200 financial statements - i.e. 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 IFRSs by entities from a broad range of geographical areas and industries, including financial institutions and insurance companies.  These tags will be published over the coming weeks as a draft supplement (an interim release) to the IFRS Taxonomy 2011.  These tags will be subject to the same due process that is applied to the development of the core IFRS Taxonomy and they will consequently be published for public review and consultation.

These initial common-practice tags will be the first part of a process that the IFRS Foundation plans to undertake in order to enhance the usability of the IFRS Taxonomy by reflecting common reporting practice.  The next part of the process will involve examining financial statement note disclosures in detail and identifying common reporting practice in these note disclosures.  As part of this effort, the Foundation has published a call for listed IFRS filers to participate in a voluntary 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 published by the IFRS Foundation.

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