Thursday, September 1, 2016

Financial reporting enthusiasts, it’s that time of year again. The Financial Accounting Standards Board has published its proposed 2017 taxonomy for U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.

The taxonomy is available for public comment until Oct. 31. After that, FASB will prepare a final version and present it to the Securities and Exchange Commission for final approval in early 2017. That 2017 taxonomy will be what we all use to file financial statements next spring, plus the accompanying XBRL exhibits that tag all the data so it can indexed and presented easily (by Calcbench or other, less cool data research firms).

So if you have an interest in the accurate filing of financial data, be sure to review the taxonomy and give a few comments.

According to a brief summary provided by FASB, “stability continues as a critical consideration with simplification efforts focused on structural design changes and topical project reviews.” That is a polite way of saying changes to the taxonomy will be relatively few, especially compared to several years ago. Topics that will see changes in 2017 include revenue recognition, derivatives, extinguishment of liabilities, credit losses, and cash flows.


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