XBRL Taxonomy Extensions

Paraphrasing Tannenbaum we could say: the nice thing about XBRL specifications and taxonomies is that there are so many of them to choose from. The variety of financial, supervisory and tax reporting domains, together with the XBRL, resulted during last few years in numerous international and local taxonomies and even greater number of extensions. This abundance is described by some as an advantage of the XBRL standard, proving its adaptability to diverse requirements. Those indicate the flexibility as a key factor allowing reflecting contemporary, dynamic business environment. However, others point out the increasing intricacy for end-users and software vendors to comply with often disparate taxonomies. Those bring also up the confusion of the primary role of a standard: a unique and consistent expression of rules and concepts – a point of reference. Although it is difficult to assess whether variety is a contemporary requirement, or a handicap of consistent and standardized business reporting, it is undoubtedly a primary result of the extensibility concept. In this chapter, we will discuss the concept of XBRL extensibility and analyze various approaches and techniques utilized to achieve it.