News for those of you confused about how to comply with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s new mandate to use XBRL technology in financial reporting: A new supply of confusion has just arrived.

The latest batch of frustration erupted earlier this month, when largest companies in America had to start filing period reports “tagged” in XBRL coding. Those tags come from a taxonomy of accounting terms that neatly matches up the tags to concepts in U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.

Except, um—GAAP was replaced on July 1 by the new Accounting Standards Codification. The existing XBRL taxonomy doesn’t match up to accounting terms in the Codification, and won’t be accurate for filings that cite Codification. As you can imagine, this discrepancy has left financial reporting executives rather peeved.

Yesterday, however, I heard rumor that XBRL U.S. (the consortium that publishes the taxonomies) has created a temporary solution for those companies facing immediate filing deadlines. To get to the bottom of things, I contacted my spy attending XBRL U.S.’s conference happening out in California this week and asked him for the scoop.

The bottom line is this: Within the next two weeks, XBRL U.S. will publish an “extension taxonomy” that reflects accounting terms according to the new Accounting Standards Codification. When a company submits a periodic report to the SEC based on the new Codification—and that will be mandatory for periods ending after Sept. 15—it should also include the new extension taxonomy as part of its attached XBRL exhibits. That gets you off the hook.

XBRL U.S. confirms my spy’s summary as correct, although not surprisingly the officials there see things differently. Michelle Savage, the group’s chief spokeswoman, says XBRL U.S. and the Financial Accounting Standards Board have been planning for Codification all along, and releasing an extension taxonomy in mid-August “will give preparers plenty of time to review the new and old references before the FASB requirements in September.”

Some technical background: To create XBRL filings, companies use a “linkbase,” which is really just a database that connects XBRL tags to specific terms in U.S. accounting. The 2008 taxonomy released last year contained one linkbase; the 2009 taxonomy released this year contains another, to reflect new accounting rules adopted in the last six months. Codification now needs a linkbase of its own, and that is what’s coming next month.

The irritation springs from early filers that had been using the 2009 taxonomy since, well, that’s what they were told to do, and just as filings are about to begin they must now change course. Savage says releasing an extension taxonomy is standard procedure; XBRL U.S. wants to publish only one formal update each year, and will then follow up with extension releases as needed when a major change (like Codification) arises in the course of the year.

Thankfully, this should all pass (like a kidney stone, some would say) when XBRL U.S. publishes its 2010 taxonomy sometime around January. That document should be in full accordance with the Accounting Standards Codification, and all will be roses.

For now, however, my spy reports “lots of confusion” out there about XBRL—an unfortunate circumstance, since XBRL is still in its first year of adoption and needs all the support it can get.

To the best of my knowledge, XBRL has no tag for “disinterest.” That’s unfortunate, since it seems to be the adjective that best fits the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission these days.

Yes, large U.S. companies must begin filing financial statements tagged in XBRL technology starting June 15. Yes, that’s because the SEC approved an XBRL mandate months ago after years of telegraphing its intention to do so. And yes, the plain truth is that most large filers will muddle through their first XBRL submissions without collapsing into chaos or bankruptcy.

Still, at what should be a proud hour for XBRL, enthusiasm has faded. We’re filing. Oh. Yippee.

The culprit here is new SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro. Given America’s current economic plight, she has astutely identified XBRL for what it is: the financial reporting equivalent of tidying up the front lobby for visitors, while the back of the company crumbles to the ground. Schapiro believes the SEC has much, much bigger problems to worry about than XBRL and the promise of easier comparison of financial data—and she’s right. The agency’s enforcement arm is a mess; the Obama Administration has proposed parceling out most SEC functions to the Federal Reserve or other agencies-to-be-named later as part of Washington’s wholesale regulatory reform. Now is not the time for the SEC to be worrying about tags.

William Lutz, director of the SEC’s 21st Century Disclosure Initiative, admitted as much at a May 28 conference discussing the future of XBRL. “A lot of the commission’s resources are turned internally” right now, he said, leaving “limited resources” for XBRL. Lutz added that two XBRL projects planned for this year—one to tag the Compensation Disclosure and Analysis and another to tag asset-backed securities—have been put off until next year, at least as far as SEC participation goes.

You can’t fault the SEC for putting its resources where they are needed. But it does underscore a fundamental problem with XBRL: adoption not only requires some specific vow of action; it requires maintenance, day in and day out, and that can be hard to deliver. Already, the XBRL taxonomy on the SEC’s website uses U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles as of 2008—not the updated taxonomy for 2009, which was released in April. And neither taxonomy incorporates Financial Accounting Standard No. 165, Accounting for Subsequent Events, approved by the Financial Accounting Standards Board only last week.

Will either of those glitches last very long? Probably not. Still, they probably will last until someone at the SEC decides to fix them—and with the new SEC leadership responding to new problems that will endure for quite a while, expect fewer people at the SEC to be thinking about XBRL.  

The Big Picture has gone on the road to Washington, D.C., to attend the XBRL International annual conference. SEC Chairman Christopher Cox is scheduled to speak this morning, and rumor is he might unveil the SEC’s final rule for mandating XBRL use in financial reporting. I suspect that’s not true, since the credit crisis has left the Commission scrambling to tend to other matters. But we’ll be blogging later today or tomorrow to give you all the latest.

Incidentally, if any Compliance Week readers are attending the conference and want to meet, please shoot me an e-mail at mkelly@complianceweek.com.

UPDATE: The SEC has not proposed a final rule to mandate XBRL in financial reports. Those of you holding your breath until XBRL technology arrives, please resume respiration.

A clue emerged this morning, when conference organizers announced that Cox had been scratched from the schedule. To be fair, the chairman does have more pressing items on his schedule these days—but the practical upshot for us is that no final rule is here, and we have no idea when one will arrive.

David Blaszkowsky, Cox’s chief henchman on all matters XBRL, did address the audience today. He gave the usual boilerplate we’ve heard at XBRL conferences for several years about the wonders of the technology … and then dodged the question of exactly when the Commission will unveil a final rule. His only hint: “very soon.”

That sort of statement requires an <obscure> tag, if I understand my XBRL taxonomy correctly. I’m off to bug the vendors for some free pens.