WASHINGTON, Nov 25, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- XBRL US, the nonprofit consortium for XML business reporting standards, today announced that they had completed a new draft of the XBRL US GAAP Taxonomies, and have made it available for public review. This second release of the US GAAP data tags builds on the first release completed and published on April 28, 2008 under contract with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The XBRL US support and maintenance program for continual review and revision to the taxonomies is designed to ensure that the dictionary of terms is always consistent with new accounting standards and that it reflects changes in common reporting practices in the marketplace. Hundreds of comments received since April 28, 2008 have been vetted and incorporated into this latest release along with new FASB pronouncements including FAS141R, FAS160, FAS161 and FAS163, among others.

The public comment period provides an opportunity for stakeholders such as public company preparers, investors, financial analysts, auditors and software providers to review and comment on the taxonomy. The public comment period ends on January 15, 2009. Comments received will be reviewed and potentially incorporated, and the final dictionary of US GAAP terms will be available for use in February. To participate in the review and to learn more about XBRL, visit http://xbrl.us/usgaappublicreview.

An SEC rule proposal, published on May 30, 2008 would require the use of XBRL for the largest public companies (with worldwide public float of $5 billion or higher), reporting as early as Q1 2009. The XBRL US GAAP Taxonomies would be the required data tags for those companies filing in XBRL format.

"It is especially important that large public companies, who will be the first to file under this program, participate in the public review", said Tom Jacob, External Reporting Manager, 3M Company. "We have been part of the SEC's XBRL Voluntary Filing Program since early 2006 and our involvement in reviewing the taxonomies gave us the opportunity to add elements and revise elements in the data tags, so that at the end of the day it was easier to create XBRL-formatted financials. Getting an early start in the process helped speed up the learning curve so that it will be a lot simpler when the SEC ruling is finalized."

Participants in the public review will have an opportunity to review and suggest revisions to definitions and labels and even to suggest that new elements be added.

"We encourage public companies, investors and analysts to participate in the review process to make sure that the list of tags, those existing as well as those newly identified, meet the reporting needs of the marketplace," said David Blaszkowsky, Director, Office of Interactive Disclosure, Securities and Exchange Commission.

Mr. Blaszkowsky went on to note that as the SEC considers the adoption of a requirement for companies to report in structured data format, "Companies should consider now the tags that they will need to complete the preparation of their interactive data files."

The taxonomies for the XBRL US GAAP Taxonomies, Release 2009, along with Release Notes and sample XBRL-formatted documents can be viewed at http://xbrl.us/usgaappublicreview . Public company financial executives can find out more about how to get started creating XBRL-formatted financials, register for free educational webcast programs and get information on the breadth of tools and services available at www.xbrl.us.