As we blogged about during the summer, the SEC has started to issue documents concerning XBRL issues. Two of our earlier posts dealt with the special study about the use of extensions and the “Dear CFO” letter about calculation relationships (links are below).
Another event that may elevate the visibility of XBRL issues in the reporting community is going to happen on September 9 at 1pm – the FASB is hosting a 90 minute XBRL webcast to discuss the 2015 Taxonomy, which was just released for public comment today, September 2.
The title of the webcast is:
IN FOCUS: Proposed 2015 GAAP Financial Reporting Taxonomy, ASU Taxonomy Changes, Taxonomy Implementation Guides, Taxonomy Simplification
Interestingly, SEC Staff from the Office of Interactive Date will be speaking.
How may of us are hoping the simplification topic is a major theme?
You can register for the webcast at:
And, just in case you want to find them again:
The special study by DERA, the Division of Economics and Risk Analysis about the use of custom tags, aka extensions, is at:
http://www.sec.gov/dera/reportspubs/assessment-custom-tag-rates-xbrl.html#.VAXPt0stnGk
The Dear CFO letter about calculation relationships is at:
http://www.sec.gov/divisions/corpfin/guidance/xbrl-calculation-0714.htm
I think all this would do is to expose an unlirdyeng existing issue rather than create one. In other words, it’s the equivalent of exposing all the dirt and dust that been hidden under the rug for years rather than “creating” new dirt. I see something positive and something negative coming out of this:Positive aspect:Lease accounting is a touchy and complex issue which has been on the discussion table for years (I believe that under IFRS, lease activity will have to be included in the balance sheet section anyways). Assuming that US companies will adopt IFRS in the near future, including lease activity in the balance sheet section will actually help with the transition.Negative Aspect:Current interest rates and terms for loans are calculated based on existing debt-to-equity ratios and pre-tax net income which does not include lease activity in its balance sheet and P&L. If all the sudden, those ratios change because of the way things are calculated –including lease activity in a balance sheet for instance, then interest rates and loan terms would get affected by an artificial adjustment, while in reality nothing has changed. Since the US economy is not at its peak, this may not be the best time to implement such an artificial adjustment.This is a complicated issue without an easy answer, and I see benefits in both changing the rules and keeping them the same. I think that for now, the best solution would be to make footnotes should be more transparent and include more detailed information. That sort of adjustment would have less of a ripple effect on interest rates and loan terms.