To assist businesses there is now a movement towards a combined filing of year end accounts with Companies House and HMRC with a mandatory date of March 2013.
To achieve this it will be necessary to learn another piece of jargon, to wit iXBRL. This stands for Inline Extensible Business Reporting Language. Rather than being a software package or a computer language it is an agreed method of capturing, structuring and reporting financial figures.
The underlying principle is that a single piece of unique but recurrent data is enfolded within a TAG. To ensure consistency of approach a dictionary of approved TAGs has been developed. Special software is being produced for this, most of which is attached to accountancy packages. It should be noted that iXBRL documents are not readable by a normal human being.
It is expected that before the end of March this year Companies House will introduce the ability to electronically file UK GAP accounts directly from iXBRL software. Without a doubt the change will add significantly to software and operational costs although it will save HMRC and Companies House a considerable sum.
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