The IFRS Taxonomy 2008 is a complete translation of International Financial Reporting Standards as published in the IFRS Bound Volume 2008 into XBRL, an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) that is used to communicate information between businesses.

The taxonomy is published in the same languages as the IFRS Bound Volume 2008 and includes support material such as the Taxonomy Architecture Paper and the Taxonomy Extenders Guide.  

The IFRS Taxonomy 2008 represents a complete review of past taxonomies and is also the first taxonomy to undergo an extensive external review by the XBRL Quality Review Team, which comprises experts from the preparer community, securities regulators, central banks, financial institutions and software companies.

The release of the IFRS XBRL Taxonomy 2008 follows the publication of a near final IFRS XBRL Taxonomy in March 2008 for a 60-day public consultation period. The Foundation received comments on the near final taxonomy from all over the world. Comments received focused on technical and minor accounting details and where appropriate were reflected in the final taxonomy.

The specific characteristics of XBRL will provide users of the IFRS Taxonomy 2008 with easier filing, access to and comparison of financial data.

In accordance with the XBRL International policy the IFRS Taxonomy 2008 is freely available on the IFRS XBRL Website at http://www.iasb.org/xbrl/taxo.asp.