A number of countries are introducing IFRS for listed or large companies while smaller companies continue to report under local accounting standards. However, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) is working on a project to develop an IFRS for SMEs. It has posted a work-in-progress Exposure Draft on this project on its website: this is expected to go through further change before it is released formally for public comment later this year. The draft is available at http://www.iasb.org/uploaded_files/documents/16_33_DraftEDSMEs.pdf

In line with this, the IASCF XBRL Team has committed to developing a taxonomy for IFRS-SMEs and have begun considering the potential implications of modelling an SME standard in XBRL. This work includes prototyping architectures for the pending IASB’s IFRS SME standard. More information is available at http://www.iasb.org/xbrl/news/2006_08_07_sme_taxonomy.html, where the IASCF XBRL team will be highlighting issues for discussion.