Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) has released the draft version of the 2018 U.S. Financial Reporting Taxonomy. While the FASB tries to make sure that the taxonomy is improving every year with the removal of certain elements, adding new elements, etc., the 2018 proposed taxonomy contains primarily updates for accounting standards and also has some new taxonomy structural changes as well.
Every year, the FASB encourages filer entities, software and service providers, XBRL and accounting professionals, and other interested parties to review the draft taxonomy and provide comments so that they can factor in such feedback during the overall finalization process.
Below is the summary of the type of changes in the proposed 2018 taxonomy:
| Type of change | No. of elements |
| Deprecated Items | 286 |
| Label Changes | 531 |
| Reference Changes | 1,157 |
| Definition Changes | 392 |
| New Elements | 465 |
| Data Type Changes | 21 |
| Taxonomy Implementation Note | 879 |
| Deleted Elements | 441 |
Source: Data as provided by FASB in 2018_US_GAAP_Release_Notes-Draft_Appendices
The proposed 2018 taxonomy will remain open for public comments till October 31, 2017. We will summarize the changes in another article. In the meantime, we would encourage people to go ahead and comment on the taxonomy before the comment period closes.
