For accounting periods starting on or after 1st January 2015, companies are required to prepare their accounts under FRS 102 or the FRS 101 (IFRS reduced disclosure framework). The new iXBRL taxonomies to support the new standards, as well as EU IFRS, are also mandatory from 1st April 2015.
The new taxonomies do not have the minimum tagging list used to date so, in addition to the requirement to tag the profit and loss account (see the September 2014 edition of Business Edge), 100% of the accounts data must be tagged.
In practice this will be a longer and more complex task with the outcome that HMRC will collect considerably more data on companies and is expected to make more use of its sophisticated analytical tools for benchmarking and tax enquiry work.
As a transitional arrangement, HMRC confirmed it does not require company accounts prepared under the old UK GAAP and already tagged on the simplified taxonomy to be retagged on the new taxonomies. However, it will insist on full tagging for all accounts and tax returns submitted after new UK GAAP has been adopted.
Accounts prepared under EU IFRS and submitted to HMRC after 1 April will need to be tagged using the new IFRS taxonomy.
Companies tagging new UK GAAP or IFRS accounts themselves will need to:
- Update their systems and consider investment in quality assurance software
- Map and understand the differences between legacy partial tagging and new full tagging
- Retrain their staff.
Companies that outsource their iXBRL tagging may wish to review the quality of the tagging service they use as tagging problems could lead to time consuming queries and enquires from HMRC.
Read about BDO's iXBRL services.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
