On March 26, 2012, the SEC updated its EDGAR system to support registrants’ use of the U.S. GAAP 2012 taxonomies and the U.S. Mutual Fund Risk/Return Summary 2012 taxonomy for interactive data (XBRL) submissions. The taxonomies are available on the SEC’s Web site.

The SEC also issued a final rule¹ that revises the EDGAR Filer Manual to support upgrades to the 2012 taxonomies. As noted on the SEC’s Web site, the “SEC staff strongly encourages companies to use the most recent version of the [U.S. GAAP taxonomies] for their Interactive Data submissions to take advantage of the most up to date tags related to new accounting standards and other improvements.” The U.S. GAAP 2012 taxonomies reflect accounting standards issued during the past year and other corrections and improvements to the 2011 U.S. GAAP taxonomies.

Release notes on the taxonomies, which include a summary of changes from the 2011 taxonomies release, are available on the SEC’s Web site. In addition, the FASB’s Web site contains links to guidance and supporting documents about the details of the changes.

[1] SEC Final Rule Release 33-9303, Adoption of Updated EDGAR Filer Manual. The final rule will become effective once it is published in the Federal Register.