Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), UK, requires all UK-based companies, including listed companies, SMEs and foreign subsidiaries operating in the UK, to file their Company Tax Returns (including annual accounts and computations) in iXBRL format with the tax authority. The requirements to file in iXBRL are effective for returns filed after April 1, 2011 for accounting periods ended on or after April 1, 2010. Companies House has also jointly announced with HMRC in September 2009 that it would adopt the same iXBRL format for online submission of accounts. This means that the statutory accounts that must be prepared for company shareholders and that are also sent to HMRC as part of the Company Tax Return will also be accepted by Companies House online. Although Companies House has not yet mandated iXBRL format for such filings, it is currently accepting them on a voluntary basis.

Beneficiaries of XBRL data:

Regulators:

• Greater transparency through ease of analysis of the regulated entities filings
• Increase data accuracy
• Dramatically reduced the time to process filings from weeks to days
• Rise in analyst productivity
• Validate and review data much more efficiently and usefully than they have hitherto been able to do.

Corporate Community:

• Cost savings in preparation, report creation, analysis. High flexibility through the use of dashboard based business rules. This leads to significant savings in man hours and lead time in compliance and consolidation
• Faster availability of data into standard reports
• Extracts data from accounting packages and makes it standardized and portable
• Provides a common framework of definitions
• Easy data handling due to standardization and automation, centralization of delivery
• A pioneering status among enterprises in the use of XBRL in India. Image enhancement in the marketplace through Increase of quality and consistency of data

Auditors:

• Automate financial statements handling, cutting out time-consuming and costly collation and re-entry of information.
• Accurate and Quality Data
• Facilitates audit trail

Equity Analyst/Investment Banker/Credit Analyst/Investors:

• Easier access to financial data
• Easier analysis and comparison of financial data
• Utilizing a publicly available XBRL database of Risk Return filings or prospectuses, could easily, in a matter of minutes, identify funds for review based upon fund type, return history and expense information
• Simplify the selection and comparison of data, and deepen their company analysis
• Time required for analysis, validation and arranging financial information according to the needs is greatly reduced.