New US GAAP 2009 XBRL Taxonomies Now Available

[First paragraph updated as my original post was done while XBRL US was still getting their web site set up.]

Today XBRL US rolled out the long-awaited new US GAAP 2009 XBRL taxonomies.  The new taxonomies can be found here and are available for reviewing using their online taxonomy viewer.  From an initial glance, the same 5 industry entry points found in the 2008 taxonomies are still supported (Commercial and Industrial, Real Estate, Insurance, Banking and Savings, Brokers and Dealers) as well as the Document and Company Information (DCI) taxonomy have been updated.  New in the bunch is the updated Schedule of Investments for mutual fund companies.

The only "grain of salt" as of now would be that although the taxonomies are out and available for use, officially the SEC has yet to recognize these new taxonomies as being supported by the EDGAR System.  The Kevin Bacon-esque flowthrough on this is that the Final Rule refers to the EDGAR Manual to find the list of supported XBRL taxonomies, and the recently approved updated EDGAR Manual (just updated today, in fact) refers to this web site for the official listing of recognzied EDGAR Standard Taxonomies.  Unfortunately the new 2009 taxonomies are not yet listed while the 2008 taxonomies remain on the list (and honestly have to remain on the list, as the SEC simply can't shut these down over night).

I'm sure this is only a timing issue and now that the taxonomies are actually out, the SEC will move quickly to update the list of Standard EDGAR Taxonomies to include the new 2009 taxonomies.  Until this occurs, the official SEC party line is that filings based on taxonomies not on the list are not supported by EDGAR and thus test or live submissions cannot be done using them (although work-arounds do exist...=).  

Net net is this is great news as it represents the final outstanding piece to the start of the mandate puzzle.  I would recommend anyone currently tagging data, or soon to start, move aggressively to begin reviewing and ultimately tagging with these new taxonomies, especially those companies impacted by FAS160 or FAS141R.  Having said this, I do find it interesting that the taxonomies have a February date and yet they just released today.  A bit peculiar, isn't it?...=)

-Rob