The Financial Acunting Foundation has a new responsibility: ongoing maintenance of the U.S. GAAP Financial Reporting Taxonomy in the new data-tagging format mandated by the SEC.

The FAF, which oversees both the Financial Acunting Standards Board and the ernmental Acunting Standards Board, now has the job of upkeep of the GAAP data tags using Extensible Business Reporting Language, or XBRL, technology. The FAF and FASB plan to assemble a small team of technical staff who will be dedicated to maintaining the taxonomy and will work towards the release of the next taxonomy update in early 2011.

The taxonomy was originally developed by a nonprofit group, XBRL US. FASB provided technical acunting standards support to XBRL US, and it expects to ntinue interacting with XBRL US going forward. The new responsibility mes after several months of discussions between the FAF and the staff of the SEC. 

The U.S. GAAP Financial Reporting Taxonomy is a list of mputer-readable tags in XBRL that allows mpanies to label the thousands of pieces of financial data included in financial statements and related footnote disclosures. The tags allow mputers to automatically search for and assemble data so it can be aessed and analyzed more easily by investors, analysts, journalists and the SEC staff.  

“The FASB team assigned to taxonomy maintenance will work closely with the SEC, investors, issuers, acunting firms and other stakeholders to develop updates that are of the highest quality,” said FAF Chairman Jack Brennan in a statement.

The maintenance activities will focus on updating the taxonomy for changes in U.S. GAAP, best practices in taxonomy extensions and technical enhancements.