Filing of Financial Statements in iXBRL mode

Since 1 April 2011, for accounting periods ending on or after 1 April 2010, it is mandatory for companies to file their Company Tax Return with HMRC online using iXBRL.

Company Tax Return

A Company Tax Return comprises:

• Corporate Tax Return form (Form CT600) into XML
• Corporation tax computation into iXBRL
• Legal entity (statutory) accounts (UK GAAP or IFRS) into iXBRL

XBRL instance document is required to be prepared as per various applicable Taxonomy. HMRC has mandated the full tagging of Financial Statements. Accordingly, major components of Financial Statements are noted below:

• Statement of Financial Position (Balance Sheet)
• Statement of Profit or Loss or Income and Expenditure Account
• Statement of Cash Flows
• Schedules & Notes to Balance Sheet and Profit and Loss Statement
• Audit Report with annexures thereto
• Director or Board Report with annexures thereto

Apart from above, there are various other details/documents which are required for XBRL filing. Please fill up the Contact form so that we can send you the complete checklist for XBRL filing.

Accounts often include more than just financial data, for example charts and diagrams showing trends over a number of years, comparison with sector indices, general descriptive information on the scope of business and operations. Not all this needs to be tagged. The following describes how to identify which data within a set of accounts needs to be tagged:

The starting point is the accounts you are required to send as part of a Company Tax Return in iXBRL format. For example, a company incorporated under the Companies Act is required to send the individual accounts they are required to prepare for their members – a balance sheet, a profit and loss account, and notes to the accounts – including any Directors’ and Auditor’s reports similarly required.

All instances of data within the balance sheet, profit and loss account and notes to the accounts must be tagged. If a data item appears more than once then it must be tagged each time.

The Directors’ report and Auditor’s report must also be tagged, but only to the extent that data within these are also within the Directors’ report and Auditor’s report sections the taxonomy (together with general information, such as company name, CRN, etc).

Prior period comparative figures within the accounts should be tagged.

There is no requirement to tag other textual reports, such as Chairman’s statement, financial review etc.

It’s only necessary to tag items in financial reports for which a tag exists in the appropriate taxonomy. If no tag is available, the data concerned should simply be left as plain text.

Minimum Content and Tagging Requirement:

To minimise the burden on companies, when the use of XBRL became mandatory HMRC initially published minimum tagging lists for the GAAP, UK-IFRS and CT computational taxonomies. The lists specified the items that had to be tagged if present in any given set of accounts and computations. Companies could choose to disregard the lists and adopt full tagging instead.

From the introduction of the CT dimensional taxonomy onwards, the taxonomy itself is considered minimum tagging, as this taxonomy represents a much simplified requirement. It is the same with the FRC taxonomies, which will not contain a minimum tagging list.

HMRC therefore require full tagging for all taxonomies.