The International Accounting Standards Committee Foundation (IASC Foundation, http://www.iascf.com) and the IFRS Taxonomy Working Group of XBRL International (http://www.xbrl.org) have developed a comprehensive eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) Taxonomy that models the financial statements that a commercial and industrial entity may use to report under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) (http://www.iasb.org.uk).

The International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), Financial Reporting for Commercial and Industrial Entities (CI) Taxonomy (the IFRS-CI Taxonomy) includes XBRL representations of the primary financial statements (balance sheet, income statement, statement of changes in equity and cash flow statement), together with accounting policies and explanatory disclosures.

Note that previous published versions of this Taxonomy consisted of separate XBRL schema containing the Primary Financial Statement elements (PFS Taxonomy) and the Explanatory Disclosures and Accounting Policies elements (EDAP Taxonomy). This release of the Taxonomy consolidates the PFS and EDAP taxonomies into a single Taxonomy, the IFRS-CI Taxonomy.

The IFRS-CI Taxonomy defines the XBRL standard for IFRS-CI elements, but in no way defines IFRS, how financial statements are presented or what must be disclosed in the financial statements.

The primary goal of the IFRS Taxonomy Working Group, in developing the IFRS-CI Taxonomy, is to build a Taxonomy that captures the elements most commonly observed in financial statements used in practice. The total set of elements included in the IFRS-CI is larger than the set of elements IFRS requires to be disclosed in the financial statements. The additional elements are included because they are either commonly observed disclosures under IFRS or are required to ensure structural integrity of the financial statements. For example, nothing in IFRS requires the disclosure of “Total Liabilities and Equity”, yet it is a common disclosure observed in financial statements prepared under IFRS.

The purpose of this and other taxonomies produced using XBRL is to facilitate data exchange among applications used by companies and individuals as well as other financial information stakeholders, such as lenders, investors, auditors, infomediaries, attorneys, and regulators.

The IFRS-CI Taxonomy design will facilitate the creation of XBRL instance documents that capture business and financial reporting information for commercial and industrial entities according to the International Accounting Standards Board’s (http://www.iasb.org.uk) International Financial Reporting Standards (incorporating International Accounting Standards and Interpretations). The IFRS-CI Taxonomy provides a framework for consistent identification of elements when entities create XBRL documents under that Taxonomy. Typically, documents prepared using this Taxonomy can facilitate the reporting requirements of corporations to make annual, semi-annual or quarterly disclosures to stakeholders and capital markets.

1.2. Authority

The authority for this IFRS-CI Taxonomy is based upon the International Accounting Standards Board’s (http://www.iasb.org.uk) International Financial Reporting Standards incorporating International Accounting Standards (IAS) and interpretations issued by the SIC effective 01 January 2003 (http://purl.org/NET/xbrl/ias-2003-01-01/). The IFRS-CI Taxonomy also includes non-authoritative “common practices,” where the Standards and interpretations are silent on common patterns of financial reporting.

As this Taxonomy primarily addresses the reporting considerations of commercial and industrial entities, industry specific standards, such as IAS 26 (Accounting and Reporting by Retirement Benefit Plans) and IAS 30 (Disclosures in the Financial Statements of Banks and Similar Financial Institutions) disclosure requirements are not represented in the IFRS-CI Taxonomy’s content.

The particular disclosures this IFRS-CI Taxonomy models are those:

1. Required by particular IFRSs

2. Typically represented in IFRS model financial statements, checklists and guidance materials as provided from each of the major international accounting firms.

3. Found in common practice financial reporting, and

4. Flow logically from items 1-3, for example, sub-totals and totals.

This IFRS-CI Taxonomy complies with the candidate recommendation XBRL Specification Version 2.1, dated 2003-10-07 [XBRL].

1.3. Taxonomy Status

The IFRS-CI Taxonomy is an Acknowledged Public Working Draft. Its content and structure have been reviewed by both accounting and technical teams of the IASC Foundation (http://www.iascf.com) and the IFRS Taxonomy and XBRL Specification Working Groups of XBRL International. It is intended that the IFRS-CI Taxonomy will comply with the Financial Reporting Taxonomy Architecture (FRTA).

XBRL Taxonomies can exist in five states insofar as XBRL International is concerned:

Working Draft – Draft of an International Working Group.
Unacknowledged - Developed externally but not royalty-free, or not known to be spec compliant.

Acknowledged - Developed externally, compliant with the specification, and minimally 'advertised' by XBRL International.

Approved - Acknowledged, and complying with published best practices.
Recommended - Approved, and recommended because it is better than alternative taxonomies for the same purpose.

The following is a summary of levels of approval attainable within each state of Taxonomy approval outlined above:

Internal Working Draft – Internal Working Draft version of a Taxonomy exposed to XBRL International members for internal review and testing. An Internal Working Draft is subject to significant changes as initial testing is undertaken. Its structure may not be stable and its content may not be complete.

Public Working Draft – Working Draft version of a Taxonomy exposed to the public for review and testing. A Public Working Draft has been tested and its structure is unlikely to change although its contents may still change as the result of broader testing.

Final – Final version of a Taxonomy, designated by XBRL International as the most appropriate representation of a particular reporting environment.

1.4. Scope of Taxonomy

This Taxonomy is the IFRS-CI Taxonomy. The IFRS-CI Taxonomy may be used with the XBRL Global Common Document (INT-GCD) Taxonomy. In addition, other national jurisdictions and industries may leverage the IFRS-CI and INT-GCD. This section describes the relationship between these taxonomies.

Global Common Document Taxonomy (INT-GCD)

The INT-GCD Taxonomy incorporates elements that are common to the vast majority of XBRL instance documents. The INT-GCD Taxonomy has elements that describe the XBRL instance document itself and the entity to which the instance document relates. The Taxonomy was co-developed by the IFRS Taxonomy Development and XBRL US Domain Working Groups. See http://www.xbrl.org/taxonomy/int/br/common/gcd/2002-10-15/.

IFRS-CI – Taxonomy (this Taxonomy)

The IFRS-CI Taxonomy encompasses the financial statements that private sector and certain public sector entities typically report in annual, semi-annual or quarterly financial disclosures as required by IAS 1, paragraph 7 (revised 1993) and IAS 34, paragraph 8 (revised 1998).

Those financial statements are the:

Balance Sheet
Income statement
Statement of Cash Flows
Statement of Changes in Equity
Accounting Policies
Explanatory Disclosures

and their condensed equivalents.

Reporting elements from those financial statements may be incorporated into a wide variety of other disclosures from press releases to multi-period summaries.

IFRS Framework

Used together, these taxonomies will meet the reporting needs of entities that meet three criteria, viz :

(i) report under International Financial Reporting Standards (incorporating International Accounting Standards and interpretations),

(ii) are in the broad category of “commercial and industrial” industries and

(iii) have a relatively common and consistent set of reporting elements in their financial statements.

Whilst many reporting entities meet these three criteria, there are entities that require different or additional elements (i.e. extension taxonomies) to those captured in this Taxonomy.

For this reason, additional taxonomies that represent extensions to IFRS-CI are likely to be required. These taxonomies are likely to identify the particular needs of:

International industries, for example, airlines, pharmaceuticals or agribusiness.
National jurisdictions. The accounting standards in many countries are substantially based on IFRS. However, timing differences in adoption or additional requirements may exist.
National industry or common practice, for example, agriculture or credit reporting.
Individual entities and their specific reporting requirements. These extension taxonomies will either extend the INT-GCD, INT-AR, and IFRS-CI taxonomies to meet the particular reporting requirements of that industry, country or entity and/or restrict the use of particular taxonomies by limiting the use of particular IFRS-CI Taxonomy elements.

The inter-relationships of the various taxonomies are shown in Figure 1:

Figure 1: Interrelationship of Taxonomies and Instance Document

At the date of release of this document, some of these taxonomies have been created and released and others have not been created or have not been released. However, extension taxonomies are under development for some national jurisdictions and within certain industries.

1.5. Relationship to Other Work

XBRL utilises the World Wide Web consortium (W3C http://www.w3.org) recommendations, specifically:

XML 1.0 (http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-xml-15001006)
XML Namespaces (http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-xml-names-19990114/)
XML Schema 1.0 (http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-1/ and http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/), and
XLink 1.0 (http://www.w3.org/TR/xlink/).

2. Overview of the IFRS-CI Taxonomy

The following is an overview of the Taxonomy. It is assumed that the reader is familiar with financial and business reporting and has a basic understanding of XBRL.

2.1. Contents of the Taxonomy

This IFRS-CI Taxonomy makes available to users the most commonly disclosed financial information under International Financial Reporting Standards (incorporating International Accounting Standards and interpretations). This Taxonomy is an expression of financial information in terms that are understandable by a computer application and which can in turn render that information useful to humans.

The IFRS-CI Taxonomy is made up of a Discoverable Taxonomy Set (“DTS”) of interrelated XML files:

XML Schema File (.XSD files): An XBRL Version 2.1 Taxonomy XML Schema file.
XBRL Linkbases (.XML files): “Linkbases” for:

Labels
References
Presentation relationships between elements;
Calculation relationships between elements; and
Definitional relationships between elements (not included at this time).

The package is represented visually, with an example based on Balance Sheet reporting of Non Current Investment Property is shown in Figure 2:

Figure 2: IFRS-CI Taxonomy Package with Descriptions and Examples

The diagram above shows that a Taxonomy is a collection of one or more XML Schema files. The XML Schema is further described by a number of linkbases.

Two XML Schema files are provided with this Taxonomy. The first XML Schema file (http://www.xbrl.org/taxonomy/int/fr/ifrs/ci/2003-10-15/ifrs-ci-2003-10-15.xsd) contains Taxonomy elements and links ONLY to the references linkbase. The second XML Schema file (http://www.xbrl.org/taxonomy/int/fr/ifrs/ci/2003-10-15/ifrs-ci-2003-10-15-WINDOW.xsd) imports the first XML Schema file and provides links to ALL linkbases.

The purpose of providing these two files (a schema file and a schema “Window Taxonomy”) is to enable users of the Taxonomy the flexibility of selecting the linkbases they wish to make use of, rather than forcing the use of all linkbases under a single schema file. For example, some jurisdictions may not wish to use English labels. Similarly, they may wish to redefine element calculation, definition or presentation links.

2.2. Taxonomy Structure

Overview

The IFRS-CI Taxonomy contains more than 3,000 XBRL elements, which are unique, individually identified concepts. The XML schema file is the foundation of the Taxonomy package and provides a straightforward listing of the elements in the Taxonomy. The associated linkbases provide the information that is necessary to interpret (e.g. Label and Reference linkbases) Taxonomy elements or place a given Taxonomy element in context relative to other Taxonomy elements (e.g. Calculation and Presentation linkbases).

Viewing a Taxonomy

The actual IFRS-CI Taxonomy comprises an XSD file that expresses concepts and linkbases that express relationships between Taxonomy concepts and/or provide documentation. Viewing the full relationship between the XML Schema and the linkbase files requires specialist software. For review purposes, a paper-based representation, in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) or Excel, is the most practical solution. The disadvantage is that, in this printed form, many of the characteristics of taxonomies are not obvious. Printed versions are two-dimensional, whereas the information in the Taxonomy is multi-dimensional.

Element Organisation

Users of the Taxonomy need to be able to locate Taxonomy elements, so that they can be mapped to the information systems from which data is drawn to generate XBRL Instance Documents. There are many ways the elements could have been organised, including, for example, alphabetical order. The IFRS-CI Taxonomy is organised using a “Balance Sheet” metaphor. That is, the elements are organised using the most commonly observed financial statement presentation style based on the organisation of elements in the balance sheet. This type of organisation was adopted because it is used by many financial statement stakeholders. For example, audit working papers are often prepared using this structure. Users are typically familiar with how financial statements are generally organised.

However, this metaphor and organisation may limit the understanding of the underlying complexity and ultimate power of an XBRL Taxonomy. A Taxonomy has multiple “dimensions”. Relationships can be expressed in terms of definitions, calculations, links to labels in one or more languages, links to one or more references, etc. The metaphor used expresses only one such set of relationships, which is presentation-based and in English. There is also a danger that users will perceive that the way the elements are organised implies that this is how financial statements should be rendered. This is simply not the case. The way the Taxonomy is organised is to help users find elements, not to prescribe a presentation format.

The IFRS-CI Taxonomy is divided logically into sections that correspond to typical financial statement components. For example, the Balance Sheet section or the Income Statement section. While there is no true concept of “sections” or groupings in the Taxonomy, their purpose is simply to group similar concepts together and facilitate navigation within the Taxonomy.

Within these sections, the IFRS Taxonomy Working Group needed to choose between alternative ways of grouping elements. For example, IFRSs do not define “Finance Costs,” yet IAS-1 requires the disclosure of this item on the face of the Income Statement. Model financial statements produced by the major international accounting firms define this component differently. Some present a net finance cost figure while others treat is as a gross expense. The IFRS-CI Taxonomy presents it as a gross expense, but this does not prohibit a user from netting the revenue and expense components. Again, the IFRS-CI does not define IFRS. The organisation of the Taxonomy is designed to help users locate elements.

Abstract XML elements, for example “Balance Sheet (Classified)” and “Income Statement” provide the ability to express “groupings” of elements within an XBRL Taxonomy. Abstract XML elements can never hold values. They are purely structural in nature and are used to create artificial “sections” or “groupings” in a Taxonomy.

2.3. Element Naming Convention

The convention for naming XBRL elements within a Taxonomy follows that of XML Schema. Each name within a Taxonomy must be unique and must start with an alpha character or the underscore character. Element names are case-sensitive. The IFRS-CI Taxonomy naming convention follows these rules; see the XML Specification for more information (refer to Section 1.5 above).

In addition to following XML Schema naming requirements, the IFRS-CI Taxonomy places additional constraints on element naming based on an element naming convention developed by the IFRS Taxonomy Working Group and the US Taxonomy Working Group. Companies creating extension taxonomies are encouraged to follow this XBRL “best practices” naming convention, but are not required to do so.

The naming convention used encourages camel case names (e.g. the term “Balance Sheet” becomes BalanceSheet) that use descriptive names for readability and are common in other XML languages. The element naming convention uses English.

Certain short connector words are dropped when labels are converted to element names including, but not limited to:

an, and, any, are, as, at, be, but, by, can, could, does, for, from, has, have, if, in, is, its, made, may, of, on, or, such, than, that, the, this, to, when, where, which, with, would.

2.4. Label and Languages

In this release, labels for Taxonomy elements are provided in English. Additional linkbases will be subsequently developed to express Taxonomy labels in other languages, for example French or Japanese. These labels will be represented in separate label linkbases.

The labels provided in the IFRS-CI Taxonomy are not intended to be the exact labels used in financial reporting. The labels are often more verbose descriptors to help the user understand the Taxonomy element.

The IFRS-CI Taxonomy relies on IFRS to define the meaning of each element. No definitions are provided within the Taxonomy.

Each label in the Taxonomy is unique within this Taxonomy in order to make using the Taxonomy easier and to assist a user to understand what an element might represent. These “verbose” labels may be supplemented by other labels that have the more precise term commonly used in financial statements.

2.5. References

This IFRS-CI Taxonomy provides references to IFRS standards and other authoritative sources. Reference information is captured in the Taxonomy reference linkbase using the following element names: Name, Number, Paragraph, Subparagraph, and Clause – e.g. IFRS 99 17 (b) (ii).

Sources for references provided in the IFRS-CI Taxonomy include:

IFRS standards, referenced as: IFRS x para y(z) or IAS x para y(z)
IFRIC and SIC interpretations referenced as: IFRIC x para y(z) or SIC x para y(z)
IFRS common practice, referenced as: IFRS-CP
Structural completeness (i.e. a sub-total), referenced as: IFRS-SC
XBRL related (i.e. a type), referenced as: XBRL

3. Points to Note in Using the IFRS-CI Taxonomy

3.1. Introduction

The following explanation of the IFRS-CI Taxonomy, the taxonomies with which this IFRS-CI Taxonomy is designed to interoperate, and examples of how to interpret the IFRS-CI Taxonomy are provided to make the IFRS-CI Taxonomy easier to use.

This explanatory document is designed to provide an overview of the IFRS-CI Taxonomy. It is anticipated that the XBRL community will create courses, books and other materials to provide a thorough explanation of every aspect of using the IFRS-CI Taxonomy and other XBRL taxonomies.

Please note that element names are provided ONLY in the first example below (Figure 4: Sample Elements) in order to show the difference between element names and element labels. Element names are not shown in subsequent examples.

3.2. How to Interpret the Taxonomy Structure

The IFRS-CI Taxonomy does not present anything new to accountants or analysts who understand financial information. However, the way the information is structured in the printed version is most likely very new to participants in the financial reporting supply chain. This section of the IFRS-CI Taxonomy documentation provides an explanation of the IFRS-CI Taxonomy. This explanation is non-normative and the XML schema file and linkbases that explain the Taxonomy in terms a computer can interpret takes precedence over this explanation.

The element fragments shown in Figure 4 exists within the “Non Current Assets” section contained within the “Assets” section of the “Balance Sheet – (Classified)” section of the IFRS-CI Taxonomy:

Figure 3: Sample Elements

Element Label	Element Name
Non Current Assets	NonCurrentAssets
Property, Plant and Equipment	PropertyPlantEquipment
Investment Property	InvestmentProperty
Intangible Assets	IntangibleAssets

This means that for a commercial and industrial entity, there is a type of non-current asset called “Property Plant and Equipment”. This concept is represented in the IFRS-CI Taxonomy by an element with the name “PropertyPlantEquipment” and the English label “Property, Plant and Equipment”.

When an entity reports “Property, Plant and Equipment” as a component of its financial results in an XBRL instance document, it will typically report this element as the sum of specific sub-elements of property, plant and equipment (e.g. Construction in Progress, Land, Buildings, Plant and Equipment, etc.). The element “Property, Plant and Equipment” will, then, have subsidiary elements (children) that sum (“roll up”) to the total of “Property, Plant and Equipment”. In an XBRL instance document the following will be true:

· The total amount of “Property, Plant and Equipment” will be included in the single element “Property, Plant and Equipment.”

· The values of “Property, Plant and Equipment” of the entity may be recorded within one or more of the child elements provided in the IFRS-CI Taxonomy.

· The preparer of the instance document may create an extension Taxonomy and create new children within “Property, Plant and Equipment.” The values of “Property, Plant and Equipment” of the entity would be recorded within one or more of the existing children to “Property, Plant and Equipment” in the IFRS-CI Taxonomy, and/or in one or more of the extension Taxonomy elements.

All of the elements in the fragment shown are of the XBRL data type “monetary” and have a weight equal to “1”. Having a weight equal to “1” indicates that in an instance document, the value of all children of an element, when multiplied by the assigned weight, adds (or “rolls”) up to the value of the parent element. For example, “Property Plant and Equipment,” “Investment Property” and “Intangible Assets” are components of the total value of “Non Current Assets,” as are other assets such as “Biological Assets” and “Investments in Subsidiaries, at Cost”. The mathematical relationship between these elements is represented in the Calculation linkbase. In this linkbase, “Assets” has a value equal to the value of its two children “Current Assets” and “Non Current Assets”. These numeric relationships are found throughout the Taxonomy. These relationships are represented in the calculation linkbase.

The Taxonomy is structured so that parent elements precede their child elements. For example, a child of the Income Statement element, “Net Profit (Loss) Transferred to Equity” precedes the other elements in the Income Statement such as “Extraordinary Items of Income (Expense), After Tax”, or “Net Profit (Loss) from Ordinary Activities”. This pattern is followed throughout the Taxonomy.

3.3. Balance Sheet Structure

Three balance sheet formats are provided with the IFRS-CI Taxonomy:

· Classified

· Order of Liquidity

· Net Assets

These alternative formats are provided for preparers that wish to present the information in different ways. The classified format is the most typical way in which Balance Sheet information is presented. The order of liquidity format is provided for those entities that are not required to present the Balance Sheet in a classified form. The Net Assets format is a variant on the classified format and meets the reporting needs of entities in a number of countries.

3.4. Accounting Policies

The Accounting Policies section of the IFRS-CI Taxonomy is designed to provide pointers to appropriate constituents of accounting policies adopted by an entity. This disclosure is typically made in the first note to the financial statements.

Within each of these major sections are a variety of elements that meet the particular reporting requirements of corporations and the IFRS standards. For example, the element labeled “Investment Property Policy” is the element that represents the entity’s accounting policies for Investment Properties. This IFRS-CI taxonomy element is derived from the disclosures suggested in IAS 1 Para 99, as shown in the following figure:

This basic pattern continues for all accounting policies. A total of approximately 300 elements in the IFRS-CI Taxonomy are for the accounting policies of the entity. Particular entities will make the judgment as to whether they will disclose their accounting policies in aggregate at a higher level, for example at the level of the element labeled “Investment Property Policy” or individually at a more detailed level, for example at the level of the element labeled “Maximum Life or Rate for Investment Property”.

3.5. Explanatory Disclosures

The elements that relate to the financial disclosures found in Balance Sheet, Income Statement and Cash Flow are included in the “Primary Financial Statements” section of the IFRS-CI Taxonomy. This applies whether or not the disclosures are made on the “Face” of the financial statements or in the footnotes to those statements. For example, details of inventories, such as “Raw Materials” or “Inventories” may be included on the Balance Sheet or in an Inventory note to the financial statements.

The “Explanatory Disclosures” elements in this IFRS-CI Taxonomy are designed for the reporting of disclosures that enhance the meaning of financial statement.

3.6. Type Enumeration Elements

This Taxonomy section provides for type enumerations. Type enumerations are used to consistently identify (across entities expressing financial information using XBRL) in order to achieve comparability. For example, the IFRS-CI Taxonomy provides elements to disclose related party transactions. There are many types of related party transactions such as purchases or sales of goods, purchases or sales of property and other assets, etc. These types of related party transactions are listed, or enumerated, in the type enumerations section. The transactions with related parties section requests an element “Type of Related Party Transaction”. An element from the type enumerations section MUST be used, or the financial statement preparer MAY in their extension Taxonomy provide a type which would be used as a value for the “Type of Related Party Transaction” element within an instance document.

3.7. Equivalent facts ( essence-alias)

Although a Taxonomy is conventionally displayed as a single tree, it is important to understand that an element may have children that are defined in terms of definition links while other children of the same element are defined in terms of calculation links. The illusion that a Taxonomy consists of a single tree – an illusion reinforced by the convention of using a one-dimensional “Balance Sheet metaphor” in the IFRS-CI Taxonomy printout – breaks down in an important practical sense. Some “total” amounts have several children, each of which essentially represents a different way to calculate a total. In this case, the calculation link between the child and the parent has a weight of one, even though this representation would lead to double counting (XBRL summation).

These exceptions require the use of “essence-alias” definition links. The “essence-alias” or “essence-alias” concept is part of XBRL Specification Version 2.1, and its interpretation is as follows: there will be an error if an instance document having two elements linked by a “essence-alias” definition relationship and which have the same numeric context have different content values.

Concept equivalency is discussed in section 5.3.5.7 of the XBRL Specification.

In the IFRS-CI Taxonomy, the following concept equivalencies exist:

Concept Equivalencies

· Both “Profit (Loss) from Operations [by function]” and “Profit (Loss) from Operations [by nature]” are equivalent to “Profit (Loss) from Operations [by function or by nature]” in the Income Statement.

· Both “Cash Flows from (Used in) Operations [Direct Method]” and “Cash Flows from (Used in) Operations [Indirect Method]” are equivalent to “Net Cash Flows from (Used in) Operating Activities [Direct or Indirect Method]” in the Statement of Changes in Equity.

· “Equity, Total, Ending Balance” in the Statement of Changes in Equity is equivalent to “Equity Plus Minority Interest” in the Balance Sheet.

3.8. Calculation Links

Financial statements are rich with relationships between the components of the financial statements. These relationships are expressed in XBRL using links. Currently, the IFRS-CI Taxonomy expresses a minimum amount of such relationships.

Note that there are three different calculation representation formats for the IFRS-CI Balance Sheet. These are:

· Order of Liquidity

· Current Non-current

· Net Assets

As resources to develop the Taxonomy further are made available and as tools are released to view and test these links, additional calculation links may be added to the IFRS-CI Taxonomy.

3.9. Presentation

The IFRS-CI Taxonomy does not endorse one presentation model for financial information over another any more, or any less, than IFRS endorses a single presentation model. The key information in the IFRS-CI Taxonomy is the expression of the elements used in financial reporting under IFRS and the relationships between those elements.

However, in order to physically present the Taxonomy in a one-dimensional printed form or in a computer application, one presentation format must be selected. The presentation format used mirrors the calculation links created to show relationships between the elements and further organised using a model that is common to accountants who prepare financial information and analysts who consume financial information.

For example, IFRS and common practice encourages the use of a classified balance sheet presented in liquidity order. Therefore, the IFRS-CI presents a classified balance sheet. In addition, the notes to the financial statements are organised in the same order as the balance sheet in order to provide an intuitive method to navigate the IFRS-CI Taxonomy; not to endorse one presentation model over another.

3.10. Namespaces

Namespaces are an important XML concept. XBRL, using XML Schema 1.0, uses XML namespaces extensively in its schemas and instance documents. The purpose of a namespace, in the context of XBRL, is to identify the Taxonomy to which any particular XML element belongs. Namespaces allow software to resolve any ambiguity that may arise as a result of elements from different taxonomies sharing the same element name.

For example, the IFRS-CI Taxonomy uses the element name “CashCashEquivalents” to represent “Cash and Cash Equivalents”. If a different XBRL Taxonomy from, say, the United Kingdom also uses “CashCashEquivalents”, there must be a “differentiation” mechanism. This is accomplished by giving each Taxonomy a unique namespace. A namespace is a URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) such as http://www.xbrl.org/taxonomy/int/fr/ifrs/ci/2003-10-15 (which is the namespace of this release of the IFRS-CI Taxonomy).

A namespace is not a URL (Uniform Resource Locator). It is a globally unique identifier. Within any XML document, it is not necessary to repeat lengthy identifiers with every Taxonomy element. Instead, XML allows one to define an abbreviation for each namespace used. Using “qualified” namespaces in this way, instance documents and taxonomies can define an alias such as ifrs-ci for the IFRS-CI Taxonomy, and uk for the UK Taxonomy. Thus the IFRS-CI element would be referred to as ifrs-ci:CashCashEquivalents and the UK element as uk:CashCashEquivalents – the namespace alias adds a context-establishing prefix to every XML element.

Note that these particular prefixes reflect a usage convention only within the IFRS-CI Taxonomy as an aid to communication between humans. Software applications must not depend on these particular prefixes being used; they should process namespace identifiers and namespace prefixes as specified by the XML specifications.

Important Note: XBRL instance document element names for financial concepts must be qualified names containing a namespace prefix and an element name, for example: ifrs-ci:CashCashEquivalents.

3.11. Entering Numeric Values into Instance Documents

Figure 4 describes how balances and weights have been incorporated into the IFRS-CI Taxonomy and how corresponding values will be entered into an instance document.

Figure 4: Numeric Value Conventions

Category	Balance	Normally appears in instance document as
Asset	Debit	Positive (Credit would be negative)
Liability & Equity	Credit	Positive (Debit would be negative)
Revenue	Credit	Positive (Debit would be negative)
Expense	Debit	Positive (Credit would be negative)

Other Income	Credit	Positive (Debit would be negative)
Other Expense	Debit	Positive (Credit would be negative)
Cash Inflows		Positive
Cash Outflows		Positive

Number of Employees		Positive

3.12. Segmentation

XBRL instance documents distinguish facts that relate to different segments of an entity by using the XBRL nonNumericContext and numericContext elements. For example, revenues for an entire entity, and its revenues segmented by geographical regions, e.g., Americas, Asia-Pacific, and EMEA, are each represented by using a different numericContext.

Important note: Instance documents using the IFRS-CI Taxonomy must use the entity context or the entity context segment mechanism to distinguish disclosures related to discontinuing operations where financial statement preparers have chosen to adopt the columnar approach of segregating continuing, discontinuing operations for a full primary financial statement (e.g. Cash Flows Statement) illustrated in the Appendix to IAS 35. [Note that it is not possible to total activities across segments using the existing 2.1 specification]

4. Sample Company Sample Instance Document

4.1. Introduction

An example instance document that accords with the IFRS-CI Taxonomy, Sample Company, at http://www.xbrl.org/taxonomy/int/fr/ifrs/ci/2003-10-15/SampleCompany-2003-10-15.xml (XBRL/XML) and a Acrobat version of the accounts is at http://www.xbrl.org/taxonomy/int/fr/ifrs/ci/2003-10-15/SampleCompany-2003-10-15.pdf (PDF).

Sample Company sample instance document provides an example of how instance documents might apply the IFRS-CI Taxonomy.

4.2. Balance Sheet Example

Figure 5 shows the Consolidated Balance Sheet for Sample Company for the Year Ended 31 December 2002 with comparative information for 31 December 2001:

Figure 5: Balance Sheet of Sample Company

The instance document uses five contexts to represent information in the four statements. Three contexts represent instants in time:

Current_AsOf for 31 December 2002,
Prior_AsOf for 31 December 2001 and
PriorPrior_AsOf for 31 December 2000.

The last item is required for the Statement of Changes in Equity in order to provide for an opening and closing balance. There are two contexts for periods:

Current_ForPeriod for the year ended 31 December 2002 and
Prior_ForPeriod for the year ended 31 December 2001.

Taking Minority Interest as an example, the Balance Sheet shows €91,000 as at 31 December 2002 and €90,400 as at 31 December 2001. These facts are represented in the instance document as:

<ifrs-ci:MinorityInterestsNetAssets contextRef='Current_AsOf' unitRef='U-Euros' decimals='0'>91000</ifrs-ci:MinorityInterestsNetAssets>

<ifrs-ci:MinorityInterestsNetAssets contextRef='Prior_AsOf' unitRef='U-Euros' decimals='0'>90400</ifrs-ci:MinorityInterestsNetAssets>

The example above shows a namespace declaration ifrs-ci. When one follows the links within the instance document you will find:

xmlns:ifrs-ci="http://www.xbrl.org/taxonomy/int/fr/ifrs/ci/2003-10-15"

The namespace declaration links the instance document back to the IFRS-CI Taxonomy.

The fact for Minority Interest for the Year Ended 31 December 2002 in the example above also refers to the following Context: context="Current_AsOf".

When one follows the links within the instance document one will find:

<identifier scheme="http://www.sampleCompany.com">Sample Company</identifier>

</entity>

</period>

</context>

</unit>

One can see that this provides information on the entity, in this case Sample Company; the period, in this case the instant in time of 31 December 2002 and the unit of measure (currency), in this case Euros, according to the ISO 4217 enumerated list of currencies.

5. Reviewing this Taxonomy

5.1. Introduction

This section is designed to provide guidance for reviewing this Taxonomy and will be removed from the final version of this documentation. This section will assist the user of this documentation and of the Taxonomy to provide feedback to the IASCF and to XBRL International concerning the Taxonomy. There are three levels of review:

Global Review: A high level review of Taxonomy completeness.
Detailed Review: A detailed review of accounting disclosures.
Preliminary XBRL Review: A review of appropriate treatment of disclosures within the context of the XBRL specification.
Detailed XBRL Review: A review of appropriate treatment of disclosures within the context of the Financial Reporting Taxonomy Architecture (FRTA) Checklist of “best practice” Taxonomy building.

5.2. Global Review

This is a high level review, undertaken with the objective of ensuring the Taxonomy has not omitted any key sections. This contrasts with the Detailed Review, which is concerned with a line-by line analysis.

If a crucial part of the Taxonomy is missing, such as a specific Disclosure Note, this should be picked up in the Global Review. Some knowledge of IFRS and Financial Reporting is required to undertake this review.

The review is intended to identify missing sections of the Taxonomy rather than any missing element within a section. An example of a question that could be asked in the Global Review might be “are there elements that capture operating leases?” rather than validating each of the individual Lease Standard disclosures.

Other issues include:

Structure – nesting and completeness

Are the elements grouped in a sensible manner? To illustrate, this review would ask whether the elements that are nested under, for example, Finance Costs are appropriate. To answer this question requires a determination as to whether Finance Costs should reflect net or gross finance costs and an assessment as to whether the list of sub-elements appears complete.

Do the elements seem to roll up properly?

For example, net elements should have the ending balance as the parent element, with its component parts and gross amount expressed as its children elements.

Consistency

Are elements grouped or aggregated in a consistent manner? There may be cases where some parent elements appear to have a disproportionate number of children, and therefore provide detail that is more appropriately included elsewhere in the IFRS-CI Taxonomy.

5.3. Detailed Review

The objective of the Detailed Review is to ensure the Taxonomy correctly captures IFRS. It has two components, the first driven from IFRS and the second driven from XBRL.

IFRS Review

This review has a Financial Reporting focus, and involves validating the elements and disclosures in the Taxonomy on a line-by-line basis against IFRS.

Element accuracy is checked by reviewing the Taxonomy against:

IFRS standards and reference materials;
IFRS disclosure checklists;
Model financial statements; and
Actual financial statements

IFRS to XBRL

Reviewers should be able to identify an element in the Taxonomy for every item required to be disclosed under IFRS. This requires a 100% mapping from IFRS to the Taxonomy. This includes checking all the appropriate IFRS references.

There are many generic requirements to disclose a “component” for which there may be several classes. Examples include classes of shares, PPE (Property, Plant & Equipment) and expenses. The Taxonomy includes the most common elements to represent common classes observed in practice, in order to limit the need to build supplementary enterprise-specific taxonomies. In a similar manner, a standard may require the discourse of all “movements” in a particular item, such as capital.

This review should ensure that the element list is sufficiently complete in relation to all of these matters.

XBRL to IFRS

Not all elements in the Taxonomy will map directly to an IFRS disclosure requirement. Such elements exist in the Taxonomy because it is either 1) common practice for enterprises to disclose the fact or 2) the fact is a sub-total that helps derive the structural completeness of the Taxonomy.

5.4. Preliminary XBRL Review

This review has an XBRL focus, and involves verifying some of the attributes of the elements. The principal attributes to be verified are weights, labels and data-type.

Weights

Is the weight correct, so that the children correctly roll-up to the parent?

Labels

Label names should be consistent. For example, the net carrying amount of an asset might be labeled as “Description, Net”, such as “Goodwill, Net”. There should therefore be no cases of “Net Description” or any other variations. All abbreviations should also be consistent.

Data types

Is the element data type correct? For example, is a disclosure of textual information properly providing for a “string” data type, and numbers which have a currency associated with them providing for a “monetary” data type.

Balances

Is the element balance correct? For example, is a disclosure of the nature that it would appear on a trial balance, thus being a “debit” or “credit”.

Period types

Is the element period type correct? For example, is a concept accurately characterized as an “instant” thus representing a balance “as at” a specific point in time, or “duration” and representing a balance “for the period”.

5.5. Detailed XBRL Review

This review has an XBRL focus, and involves reviewing the Taxonomy against the Financial Reporting Taxonomies Architecture (FRTA).

6. Updates and Changes

6.1. Change Log

None at this time.

6.2. Updates to this Taxonomy

This Taxonomy will be updated with revisions for errors and new features within the following guidelines:

· Since financial statements created using a Taxonomy must be available indefinitely, the Taxonomy must be available indefinitely. All updates will take the form of new versions of the Taxonomy with a different date. For example, the Taxonomy http://www.xbrl.org/taxonomy/int/fr/ifrs/ci/2003-10-15/ifrs-ci-2003-10-15.xsd will never change. New versions will be issued under a different name, such as “http://www.xbrl.org/taxonomy/int/fr/ifrs/ci/2004-12-15/ifrs-ci-2004-12-15.xsd”. This will ensure that any Taxonomy created will be available indefinitely.

It is anticipated that this Taxonomy will be updated as required to incorporate changes in International Accounting Standards, common practices, and business reporting norms.

6.3. Errors and Clarifications

The following information relating to this Taxonomy will be accumulated:

Errors that are brought to the attention of the preparers of this specification;
Workarounds where appropriate and available;
Clarification of items, which come to the attention of the editors via comments and feedback.

If you wish to report an error or require a clarification, please provide feedback as indicated in the “Comments and Feedback” section of this document.

6.4. Comments and Feedback

Comments and feedback are welcome, particularly ideas to improve this Taxonomy. If you have a comment, feedback, or wish to report an error, post comments to:

xbrlfeedback@iasb.org.uk (mailto:xbrlfeedback@iasb.org.uk)

7. Future Developments

The IFRS Working Group of XBRL International plan to stage this taxonomy to a Public Working Draft of a recommended taxonomy by 31 December 2003. At the same time, it will be fully compliant with the Financial Reporting Taxonomy Architecture (FRTA).

8. Acknowledgements

A tremendous effort has gone into creating this piece of intellectual property that is being licensed royalty-free worldwide by the IASC Foundation and XBRL International for use and benefit of all. The IASC Foundation and members of XBRL International believe that this cooperative effort will benefit all participants in the financial information supply chain.

The IASC Foundation and XBRL International would like to acknowledge the contributions of the following individuals for their work in the creation of this Taxonomy, and to their organisations that provided funds and time for their participation in this effort:

Name	Organisation	Accounting Jurisdiction
Alastair Boult	Audit New Zealand	New Zealand
Roger Debreceny	Nanyang Technological University	Singapore
Kersten Droste	PricewaterhouseCoopers	Germany
Thomas Egan	Deloitte and Touche	Singapore
Dave Garbutt	FRS	South Africa
Preetisura Gupta	PricewaterhouseCoopers	Singapore
David Hardidige	Ernst and Young	Australia
David Huxtable	KPMG	Australia
Walter Hamscher	Standard Advantage	USA
Charles Hoffman	UBMatrix	USA
Josef Macdonald	Ernst and Young	New Zealand
Gillian Ong	Nanyang Technological University	Singapore
Ong Suat Ling	Ernst & Young	Singapore
Paul Phenix	Australian Stock Exchange	Australia
Kurt Ramin	IASC Foundation	IFRS
Jim Richards	Murdoch University	Australia
David Prather	IASC Foundation	IFRS
Trevor Pyman	XBRL Australia	Australia
Julie Santoro	KPMG	Russia
Mark Schnitzer	Morgan Stanley	USA
David Scott-Stokes	UBMatrix	Australia
Geoff Shuetrim	KPMG	Australia
Stephen Taylor	Deloitte and Touche	Hong Kong
Bruno Tesniere	PricewaterhouseCoopers	France
Alan Teixeira	Institute of Chartered Accountants	New Zealand
Jan Wentzel	PricewaterhouseCoopers	South Africa
Charles Yeo	Deloitte and Touche	Singapore

9. XBRL International Members

A current list of corporate members of XBRL International can be found at the www.xbrl.org web site.

10. References (non-normative)

[XBRL]	Walter Hamscher et al.
	Candidate Recommendation for the Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) 2.1 Specification
	.
	(http://www.xbrl.org/resourcecenter/specifications.asp?sid=22)

[Naming]	Robert Blake, Walter Hamscher and David Prather
	Taxonomy Element Naming Best Practice Version 1.0
	Working Draft of 2002-10-17. Contact mark.schnitzer@morganstanley.com for the most current version.

[Review]	Josef Macdonald and Alan Teixeira
	Reviewing and XBRL GAAP Taxonomy
	Contact this has changed for the most current version.

11. Intellectual Property Status

This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing the copyright notice or references to XBRL International or XBRL organizations, except as required to translate it into languages other than English. Members of XBRL International agree to grant certain licenses under the XBRL International Intellectual Property Policy (www.xbrl.org/legal).

This document and the information contained herein is provided on an "AS IS" basis and XBRL INTERNATIONAL DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

The attention of users of this document is directed to the possibility that compliance with or adoption of XBRL International specifications may require use of an invention covered by patent rights. XBRL International shall not be responsible for identifying patents for which a license may be required by any XBRL International specification, or for conducting legal inquiries into the legal validity or scope of those patents that are brought to its attention. XBRL International specifications are prospective and advisory only. Prospective users are responsible for protecting themselves against liability for infringement of patents. XBRL International takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any intellectual property or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in this document or the extent to which any license under such rights might or might not be available; neither does it represent that it has made any effort to identify any such rights. Members of XBRL International agree to grant certain licenses under the XBRL International Intellectual Property Policy (www.xbrl.org/legal).

12. Document History

2003-09-14	Macdonald	Performed preliminary review for 2.1 release. Added background to IASB/IASCF.
2003-07-10	Hoffman	Updated URLs, images, references to taxonomy IDs, etc. Removed Novartis sample for this release as this sample is not being provided.
2003-07-08	Macdonald	Performed detailed review documentation. Added explanation of IFRS name change. Provided amendments as necessary.
2003-06-23	Hoffman	Merged the PFS and EDAP documentation into one document. Changed use of term ‘IAS’ to ‘IFRS’, as appropriate. Updated URLs. Changed all references to PFS and EDAP as required.
2003-10-08	Pyman	Review and refine wording
2003-10-10	Debreceny	Rewrite and edit.
2003-10-16	Egan	Edit
2003-10-20	Debreceny	Edit
2003-10-22	Hoffman, Macdonald	Final review of document.

Status:	Acknowledged Public Working Draft, issued in accordance with XBRL International Processes REC 2002-04-20.
Issued:	2003-10-15 (15 October 2003)
Issued by:	International Accounting Standards Committee Foundation and XBRL International
Name:	International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), Financial Reporting for Commercial and Industrial Entities (CI)
Description:	This Taxonomy is intended to allow traded entities to prepare XBRL-based interim and annual financial statements according to IFRS. This includes consolidated publicly listed entities, parent entity financial statements, and non-consolidated entities.
Namespace identifier:	http://www.xbrl.org/taxonomy/int/fr/ifrs/ci/2003-10-15
Recommended namespace prefix:	ifrs-ci
Version of XBRL Specification Used:	XBRL Specification 2.1 dated 2003-10-22 (Candidate Recommendation)
Relation to Other XBRL Taxonomies:	This Taxonomy does not reference any other XBRL taxonomies. This Taxonomy is intended to be referenced by other IFRS-based jurisdictions creating XBRL taxonomies for financial reporting, and by commercial and industrial entities within those jurisdictions.
Physical Location of Discoverable Taxonomy Set:	http://www.xbrl.org/taxonomy/int/fr/ifrs/ci/2003-10-15/ifrs-ci-2003-10-15.xsd (Schema linked only to references linkbase) http://www.xbrl.org/taxonomy/int/fr/ifrs/ci/2003-10-15/ifrs-ci-2003-10-15-WINDOW.xsd (Schema linked to all linkbases, “Window Taxonomy”) http://www.xbrl.org/taxonomy/int/fr/ifrs/ci/2003-10-15/ifrs-ci-2003-10-15-references.xml (References linkbase) http://www.xbrl.org/taxonomy/int/fr/ifrs/ci/2003-10-15/ifrs-ci-2003-10-15-labels.xml (Labels linkbase) http://www.xbrl.org/taxonomy/int/fr/ifrs/ci/2003-10-15/ifrs-ci-2003-10-15-presentation.xml (Presentation linkbase) http://www.xbrl.org/taxonomy/int/fr/ifrs/ci/2003-10-15/ifrs-ci-2003-10-15-calculation.xml (Calculation linkbase) http://www.xbrl.org/taxonomy/int/fr/ifrs/ci/2003-10-15/ifrs-ci-2003-10-15-definition.xml (Definition linkbase not provided at this time)
Additional Taxonomy Documentation:	Additional information relating to this taxonomy can be found at the following URL including additional documentation, printouts, sample instance documents, error logs, etc. http://www.xbrl.org/taxonomy/int/fr/ifrs/ci/2003-10-15/

Taxonomy	An XBRL Taxonomy is an XML Schema-compliant .xsd file that contains XBRL elements, which are XML elements that are defined by XBRL-specific attributes. An XBRL Taxonomy may also contain references to XLink linkbases.
Instance document	An XML document that includes one or more XBRL elements and optional references to zero or more XLink linkbases.
Element	An XBRL element is a “fact” or piece of information described by an XBRL Taxonomy. For example, an element with the name “ifrs-ci:CurrentAssets” is the Taxonomy’s XBRL element name for the financial statement disclosure fact “Current Assets.”
Linkbase	Linkbases provide additional information about XBRL elements, including relationships between elements. For example, “Property, Plant and Equipment” is defined as a type of “Asset.” Linkbases used by XBRL are compliant with the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) XML Linking Language (XLink) Recommendation 1.0, 27 June 2001.
Discoverable Taxonomy Set (DTS)	A set of XBRL schema files and linkbases, which together accommodate the reporting requirements for a particular constituency.
Anchor and Extension Taxonomy	XBRL taxonomies can import, or “extend”, other taxonomies. Taxonomies that import other taxonomies are called “Extension” taxonomies. The base taxonomy, which does not itself import any other taxonomies is called the “Anchor” taxonomy. The IFRS taxonomy is intended to be an Anchor taxonomy.
Tuple	Reference is made in this document to a tuple. This refers to a grouping of facts that should be seen as a package. For example, a tuple representing a “book” might be made up of elements including author, publisher, title, year of publication etc.

Summary Taxonomy Information:

Principal Editors of this Document and Taxonomy:

Other Significant Contributors to this Taxonomy:

IFRS Taxonomy Working Group Chair:

3.3. Balance Sheet Structure

3.4. Accounting Policies

3.5. Explanatory Disclosures

3.10. Namespaces

4. Sample Company Sample Instance Document

6. Updates and Changes

Name

Organisation

Accounting Jurisdiction