The 2012 Taxonomy for U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles contains nearly 600 new elements and hundreds more changes related to labels, references, and definitions to make it more workable for XBRL filings.

In a recent Webcast to provide a tour through the proposed 2012 GAAP Taxonomy, members of the Financial Accounting Standards Board said the latest taxonomy has been updated to reflect changes in accounting standards in the past year as well as common reporting practices that have been observed in filings. The draft taxonomy also reflects corrections of errors, removal of redundant concepts, and updated modeling to make it more usable, said Christine Tan, XBRL project manager for FASB. Finally, there are updates to provide better linkage to the related accounting rules in the Accounting Standards Codification, although pre-Codification references have been retained to help practitioners who are still more familiar with historical references.

All domestic public companies are required to follow a taxonomy approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission for submitting their financial statements in the new data-interactive XBRL format, with the smallest companies submitting under the new system for the first time this year. The draft 2012 Taxonomy is open for public view and comment through Oct. 31.

FASB staff will make any necessary changes based on comments and feedback and expect to publish the final taxonomy in early 2012. The SEC says it will be a final, approved taxonomy when it appears on its Website, making it acceptable for all subsequent XBRL submissions. FASB also maintains a “development Taxonomy,” or a version of the taxonomy that is continuously updated and open for comment, except during the 60-day window of time when the draft 2012 Taxonomy is open for comment.

Susan Younts, an SEC staff member with the regulator's Office of Interactive Disclosure, says the staff is strongly encouraging filers to use the most recent version of the taxonomy to take advantage of the most recent updates, but is not objecting where filers use earlier versions just to allow for an orderly transition to the new technology. She warns, however, that companies will need to adapt to more current taxonomies at some point. “It is reasonable to assume that at some point older versions of the taxonomy will no longer be available to use,” she said. She promised preparers will get plenty of notice before older taxonomies disappear from the SEC's Wbsite.

Younts says the staff still sees plenty of confusion on how to report negative values in financial statements through the XBRL system. Although numerous concepts or tags in the taxonomy are inherently positive or negative just by virtue of their definition, preparers add positive or negatives to those amounts, resulting in the reporting of the wrong figure. “You really need to go back to accounting basics to get this one right,” she said. “You need to think about whether the amount you are tagging is a debit or credit balance. If the element selected has the same balance type as the amount you are tagging, don't enter the amount as a negative value.”