Issued: November 1, 2013
Impact: All US GAAP

Issue

When performing level 3 tagging of table text blocks the situation often arises where the table textblock includes a table that could be represented by 2 existing taxonomy elements.  For example if a company combined finite and indefinite disclosures in a single table would it be possible for the filer to tag the one text block disclosure with one or more tags.

Recommendations

The filer can use two text block elements to define a single text block in the html that incorporates both concepts.  This eliminates the need to create extensions for every possible possibility of disclosure reported. The SEC has discussed this approach as a possible solution on webinars.  This webinar is available at http://www.sec.gov/news/otherwebcasts/2010/xbrlseminar032310-discussion.htm

This will require that the textblock disclosure be tagged separately with each of the text block elements. Each of the facts (tables) reported should be identical. Note that the table will appear twice in the SEC interactive data viewer once with each tag.